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Sharief to brief cabinet, military on talks with Clinton

Armed only with a US promise, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief today returned to explain a decision on withdrawing insurgents from Kargil to defiant fighters, military chiefs and a questioning public.

Sharief will brief tomorrow a meeting of top military and cabinet officials on the agreement with US President Bill Clinton to take ''concrete steps'' to restore normalcy to the Line of Control.

Political sources said the publicity-shy Sharief might address the nation on national media on what Kashmir militants and opposition parties are calling a sellout of Pakistan's long-standing position on the Kashmir issue.

The Defence Committee of the Cabinet, the nation's highest military and civilian body, was expected to agree to the next step at its meeting tomorrow amid conflicting signals about what was agreed in Washington's four-hour Clinton-Sharief talks on the weekend.

Sharief was expected to claim that Pakistan had successfully ''internationalised'' the 52-year-old Kashmir issue and won a Clinton pledge to take a personal interest in getting Indo-Pakistani peace talks on Kashmir re-started.

But Pakistani commentators said that India's staunch refusal to accept any kind of mediation from Washington or elsewhere undermined the strength of the Clinton pledge.

''After Kargil is restored to India, the US President would be in no position to persuade India to start any talks, leave alone any concessions to Pakistan...India could then thumb its nose at the US if it wants to,'' The Nation newspaper said.

Its editorial reflected confusion over what was agreed in Washington and how Pakistan could justify the U-turn of agreeing to withdraw forces it has staunchly said it does not control.

''The best option in matters of such grave national importance is to speak the truth and spell out the constraints which led to the decisions,'' the independent-thinking The News said in an editorial entitled 'Too much spin.'

Four days after the agreement, there was no sign of the forces withdrawing and every indication that India would continue to pound their hill-top hideaways in the Kargil-Dras sector on the Indian side of the LoC, military sources said.

''There has been some relocation of the fighters but no withdrawal,'' said one source. ''They may have switched positions as the Indians encircle some hills, but there's no pullout.''

They said that any orderly withdrawal would have to be agreed by the Indian and Pakistani army chiefs and there had been no indication to date of any talks between the two sides apart from routine weekly discussions.

The militants' umbrella group, the United Jehad Council, yesterday defiantly vowed to fight on and even to open new fronts in Kashmir, cause of two of the three Indo-Pakistani wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

Military sources said the militants could probably survive on the Kargil peaks until October when temperatures plunge to minus 40 degrees celsius but would then have to withdraw to lower regions.

EARLIER STORY: Sharief returns home

UNI

The Kargil Crisis

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