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“THE COUP IN PAKISTAN AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING THE PRESSLER AMENDMENT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H10184-H10186 on Oct. 19, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE COUP IN PAKISTAN AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING THE PRESSLER
AMENDMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 19, 1999, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized during morning hour debates for 3 minutes.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I introduced legislation to prevent the administration from waiving the Pressler amendment, a provision of law which prohibits U.S. military assistance to Pakistan. I would like to take this opportunity to urge my colleagues to join me in this initiative. While I have offered this legislation as a freestanding bill, I am also looking into other legislative vehicles that my proposal could be attached to.
Mr. Speaker, the fiscal year 2000 Defense Appropriations Conference Report approved by the House last week contains provisions giving the President broad waiver authority over several sanctions against India and Pakistan, including the Pressler amendment. There are indications that the President will veto this bill, although for unrelated reasons.
The intent of my legislation is essentially to return to the status quo on the Pressler amendment. It is my hope that last week's military coup in Pakistan, which certainly is very regrettable, may help to refocus congressional attention to the danger of the giving military aid to Pakistan and result in renewed congressional support for retaining the Pressler amendment.
Mr. Speaker, I have long supported lifting the economic sanctions against India and Pakistan, which is also accomplished in the Defense Appropriations Conference Report.
I also want to thank the conferees for another positive provision: a Sense of the Congress Resolution that the broad application of export controls to nearly 300 Indian and Pakistani entities listed on the so-
called ``Entities List'' adopted by the Bureau of Export Administration
(BXA) should be applied only to those entities that make ``direct and material contributions'' to weapons of mass destruction and missile programs and only to those items that so contribute.
But I am concerned that other provisions in the conference report could result in renewal of U.S. arms transfers to Pakistan, a government that has engaged in an ongoing pattern of hostile and destabilizing actions. Indeed, keeping the Pressler amendment on the books is the best way to accomplish the goal behind the entities list: Namely for the United States not to contribute to Pakistan's drive to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Speaker, it does not make sense to apply sanctions against commercial entities that have barely a passing relationship with weapons programs while waiving the Pressler amendment and thereby allowing for direct transfer of military technology.
It has been widely reported, Mr. Speaker, last week that the Pakistani Army Chief of Staff led a military coup against the civilian government. Ironically, we have seen several recent efforts from Pakistan to win concessions from the U.S. as a means of propping up Prime Minister Sharif's government and forestalling a military coup. These include the ill-advised attempts to have a special mediator appointed for the Kashmir conflict as well as efforts to reopen the supply of U.S. military equipment to Pakistan. But in light of the latest Pakistani coup, the futility of the strategy is apparent.
The Pressler amendment, named for the former Senator from South Dakota, was invoked by President Bush in response to Pakistan's weapons development program. It was good law when it was first adopted and it is still good law today. Earlier this year we were reminded about why the Pressler amendment was needed because of the way Pakistan instigated the hostilities in the Kargil region of Kashmir. In fact, it was the same generals who masterminded last week's coup who pressed for the disastrous military campaign in Kashmir, and we are continually confronted with evidence of Pakistani involvement in nuclear weapons and missile proliferation in other hostile or unstable regions. Last week's coup only further reminds us of the danger of renewing U.S. military ties with Pakistan.
Mr. Speaker, I want also to register my concern over recent published reports attributing to State Department officials the suggestion that a resumption of arms supplies to Pakistan would be considered as an incentive for the return to civilian rule. On this point I want to reiterate that the purpose of the legislation I have introduced is to make sure that this administration and future administrations do not provide arms to Pakistan.
Mr. Speaker, last Friday The New York Times columnist, A.M. Rosenthal, who once covered South Asia, wrote a column called ``The Himalayan Error.'' He focused on something I have often criticized, namely the pronounced tilt toward Pakistan in U.S. foreign policy. This tilt has resulted in neither democracy for Pakistan nor stability for the region.
On Sunday, another New York Times op-ed writer, Steven R. Weisman, wrote an article entitled, ``Pakistan's Dangerous Addiction to Its Military.'' And quoting from that piece, ``[A] major reason Pakistan has such a stunted political tradition compared with India is that the Army has run the country for nearly half of its short history.''
Mr. Speaker, the U.S. obviously cannot bring about democracy in Pakistan or change the Pakistanis' international behavior overnight, but we can avoid the policies that encourage Pakistan's military leaders to seize power, to foment instability in South Asia, to threaten their neighbors and to collaborate with other unstable regimes in the development and transfer of weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, reopening the American arms pipeline to Pakistan would be a disastrous mistake.
Mr. Speaker, I include those two New York Times articles for the Record.
The Himalayan Error
(By A.M. Rosenthal)
Ever since their independence, the U.S. has made decisions about India and Pakistan fully aware that it was dealing with countries that would have increasing political and military significance, for international good or evil.
Now that both have nuclear arms capability and Pakistan has been taken over again by the hard-wing military, the American Government and people stare at them as if they were creatures that had suddenly popped out of nowhere--and as if their crises had no connection at all to those 50 years of American involvement in the India-Pakistan subcontinent.
The destiny of the two countries--war or peace, democracy or despotism--lies with their billion-plus people, their needs and passions.
But American decision-making about them has been of Himalayan importance--because from the beginning it was almost entirely based on a great error. America chose Pakistan as more important to its interests than India.
Both countries have a powerful sliver of their population who are plain villains--politicians who deliberately splinter their society instead of knitting it, men of immense wealth who zealously evade taxes and the public good, religious bottom-feeders who spread violence between Hindu and Muslim in India and Muslim and Muslim in Pakistan.
But living for about four years as a New York Times correspondent based in India and traveling often in Pakistan, I knew that the American error was widening and catastrophic.
Although there were important mavericks, American officialdom clearly tilted toward Pakistan, knighted it a military ally and looked with contempt or condescension on India. Pakistan--a country whose leadership provided a virtually unbroken record of economic, social and military failure and increasing influence of Islamicists.
Many U.S. officials preferred to deal with the Pakistanis over the Indians not despite Pakistan's tendency to militarism but because of it. Man, the military fellows can get things done for you.
Washington saw the country as some kind of barrier-post against China, which it never was, and against Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Pakistanis did their part there. But when the Taliban fanatics seized Afghanistan, Pakistan's military helped them pass arms for terrorists to the Mideast.
Pakistan's weakness as an American ally, though Washington never seemed to mind, was its leaders refusal to create continuity of democratic governments long enough to convince Pakistanis that the military would not take over again tomorrow.
Across the border, India, for all its slowness of economic growth and its caste system, showed what the U.S. is supposed to want--consistent faithfulness to elected democracy. Where Pakistan failed to maintain political democracy in a one-religion nation, India has kept it in a Hindu-majority country that has four other large religions and a garden of small ones.
Danger sign: The newly re-elected Hindu-led coalition will have to clamp down harder against any religious persecution of Muslims and Christians. India's real friends will never lessen pressure against that. And the new government is not likely to stay in office long if it does not fulfill its anti-persecution promises to several parties in the coalition.
No, the U.S. did not itself create a militaristic Pakistan. But by showing for years that it did not care much, it encouraged Pakistan officers prowling for power, lessened the public's confidence in democratic government when Pakistan happened to have one and slighted the Indians' constancy to democratic elections.
In 1961, in the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, I heard the ranking U.S. diplomat urge Washington not to recognize the military gang that had just taken over South Korea after ousting the country's first elected government in its history.
But the Kennedy Administration did recognize the military government. That throttled South Koreans with military regimes for almost another two decades.
The Clinton Administration is doing what America should: demand the departure of the generals. Maybe America still has enough influence to be of use to democracy some place or other in Asia. It's the least it can do for its colossal error on the subcontinent--do for Indians, but mostly for Pakistanis.
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Pakistan's Dangerous Addiction to Its Military
(By Steven R. Weisman)
It is always tempting to see Pakistan as an artificial country carved painfully out of the remnants of the British empire, a place of such virulent sectarian hatreds and corrupt leadership that only the military can hope to govern it successfully. That view has returned now that Pakistan has suffered its fourth military coup in 52 turbulent years as a nation. Even some Pakistanis who believe in democracy but were opposed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif welcomed military intervention to change regimes.
But if a country is unruly, having generals rule is no solution. Pakistan's last military regime, which lasted from 1977 to 1988, was a useful ally, particularly in opposing the Russians in neighboring Afghanistan. But by crushing dissent, tolerating corruption and having no accountability for 11 years, the military lost credibility among Pakistanis and was eventually overwhelmed by the nation's problems.
Last spring, Pakistan's generals got the disastrous idea of sending forces into Indian territory to occupy the mountains of the disputed state of Kashmir. Indian guns and planes were driving the intruders out, and under American pressure Mr. Sharif wisely agreed to arrange for a facesaving withdrawal. Now the generals, unhappy with Mr. Sharif's retreat, have seized power, suspended the Constitution and imposed martial law, despite the absence of any threats of turmoil in the streets.
Imagine what might have happened in Kashmir had Mr. Sharif's withdrawal agreement not prevailed. The military might well have retaliated by bombing India's artillery positions, a step that probably would have forced Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to listen to his generals and invade Pakistan. These escalations could very easily have spiraled into a nuclear exchange.
As a nation, Pakistan always had a shaky foundation. Its name, which means ``land of the pure,'' is drawn from some of its constituent ethnic groups. The Bengalis of East Pakistan broke off in 1971 to become Bankladesh, and the other groups have been squabbling since. Islam is not the unifying ideology that Pakistan's founders hoped it could be.
One problem is that the original building blocks of Pakistani socieity--the clergy, the military and the wealthy feudal lords who owned most of the land--have fractured. Today the military is split into secular and Islamic camps. The landlords' power has flowed to a newly wealthy business class represented by Mr. Sharif. The clergy is split into factions, some of which are allied with Saudi Arabia, Iran, the terrorist Osama bin Laden, the Taliban in Afghanistan and others. Corruption, poverty, guns and drugs have turned these elements into an explosive mix.
To revive the idea of religion as the glue holding the country together, Pakistani leaders have promised many times to enforce Islamic law. But they have never been able to implement these promises because most Pakistanis are not doctrinaire in their approach to religion. Alternatively, the nation's leaders have seized on the jihad to ``liberate'' fellow Muslims in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-dominated state.
``The Pakistani army generals are trying to convince themselves that defeat in Kashmir was snatched from the jaws of victory by Sharif and his stupid diplomats,'' said Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center. ``This theory recurs in Pakistani history, and it is very dangerous.''
In his address to the nation, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the army chief of staff who ``dismissed'' Mr. Sharif, spoke of the military as ``the last remaining viable institution'' of Pakistan. But by imposing martial law, he has embarked on a well-trod Pakistani path toward ruining that reputation. Without question, Mr. Sharif blundered in cracking down on dissent, trying to dismiss General Musharraf and relying on cronies and family members for advice. Some Indians like the writer M.J. Akbar, editor of The Asian Age, say that it might be easier to make a deal with Pakistan's generals now that they are overtly in charge, rather than manipulating things behind the scenes. But a major reason Pakistan has such a stunned political tradition, compared with Indian, is that the army has run the country for nearly half its short history. The question remains: If Pakistanis are not capable of governing themselves, why would Pakistanis wearing uniforms be any different?
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