Indian airstrikes if Pakistan does not act fast: McCain

[Naveed Yaseen]

* US senator says Washington will not be able to do much to stop India * McCain will ‘privately try’ to dissuade India

By Ejaz Haider
LAHORE: US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has said that there is enough evidence of the involvement of former Inter-Services Intelligence officers in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attack and if Pakistan does not act, and act fast, to arrest the involved people, India will be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan.

Senator McCain, who arrived in Pakistan Friday from New Delhi with Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), was talking to a select group of Pakistanis at an informal lunch in Lahore.

When Daily Times quizzed him on the issue of use of force he said that this is what he and the other Senators were told by India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who, as Mr McCain put it, was visibly angry and reeling from the shock of the attack.

“The democratic government of India is under pressure and it will be a matter of days after they have given the evidence to Pakistan to use the option of force if Islamabad fails to act against the terrorists,” he said.

To a question about what the United States would do in the event that India carries out such a threat, Mr McCain said that Washington would not be able to do much even as “privately I will try to dissuade India from doing so”. “We were angry after 9/11. This is India’s 9/11. We cannot tell India not to act when that is what we did, asking the Taliban to hand over Osama Bin Laden to avoid a war and waging one when they refused to do so.”

He conceded the point that such an Indian attack could beget retaliation from Pakistan and that this is precisely the trajectory of actions and reactions that those who attacked Mumbai were hoping for but stressed that at this point, if Pakistan does not do anything to find and arrest the “bad guys”, India will have no option but to use force.

Senator McCain who left for Islamabad shortly after lunch said that he and the other Senators would meet the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, before proceeding to Kabul in the evening.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2008_pg1_1