Sen. Durbin and Congressmen Pallone and McDermott, all Democrats, full of praise for India and Indian Americans

CHICAGO: United States lawmakers praised India’s support after 9/11, but admitted that as a quid pro quo, Washington has to walk a thin line in South Asia because New Delhi does not want to internationalize Kashmir.

Sen. Richard Durbin, and Congressmen Frank Pallone and Jim McDermott —- all Democrats and traditional pro-India lawmakers, expressed appreciation for India and Indian Americans at the 20th Annual convention of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) held here from June 26-30.

“Our friendship with the largest democracy, the people who share our values, will continue to be celebrated,” asserted Durbin of Illinois at the concluding gala of the five-day convention. “When America was attacked Sept. 11, we know what India did. Prime Minister Vajpayee stood with the Americans, not just because 250 Indians were killed, but because India has tasted the bitter fruit of terrorism,” he told a 4,000-strong audience of Indian-American physicians and their families.

Durbin is a senior senator from Illinois and is on several influential panels such as the appropriations committee, the judiciary committee and the select committee on intelligence.

Rep. Jim McDermott, who has traveled to India 18 times in the last decade, implied however that the problem with the U.S. policy toward India on the issue of Kashmir was that New Delhi did not want it internationalized.

“One problem is when we go to India, people think we are always with Pakistan. But our relations are much more fluid,” McDermott insisted, speaking at a panel discussion on Indo-U.S. Relations held at the convention. He obliquely questioned the Bush administration’s faith in Pakistan. “India offered bases (to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11), but we put them in Pakistan, Tajikistan, everywhere, but not in India,” though it would take an American plane barely a few minutes more to fly sorties out of an Indian airbase than it takes from any of the other countries currently being used in the Afghanistan operations. “The distance between India and Afghanistan is not much, and if you ask me why —- I don’t know. It was not discussed with us,” he asserted.

The Kashmir issue was a dilemma for the U.S., he admitted, but added that Washington’s relations with India should look beyond. “The dilemma for the U.S. is: The Indian government is not interested in internationalizing the issue and Pakistan is. So, it’s hard for our government to figure out what role to play to come to a realistic solution,” McDermott said.

Rep. Frank Pallone, one of the founders of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans asserted that the Bush administration had clearly recognized Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s ability to end cross-border terrorism. “The constant word we get from Pakistan is there’s nothing they can do, but we know that’s not true,” said Pallone, who has aggressively defended better relations with India and providing conditional aid to Pakistan. At this forum as well, he said he was concerned about the amount of military, arms sales to Pakistan with the lifting of sanctions. “I think given the fact that Pakistan has encouraged incursions ... it is a mistake for us to provide this level of military assistance,” which he said would soon be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We need to link this to what Musharraf does to stop the incursions,” Pallone insisted. He urged the physicians to get more active and write letters to their representatives to demand there not be any military assistance to Pakistan until the incursions are stopped.

Earlier, Dr. Raj Bothra, chairman of AAPI’s Indo-U.S. Relations Committee, spoke heatedly on what he termed as Washington’s double standards in its relations with Pakistan. He said Pakistan had been abandoned in the past and it would be abandoned again by Washington, once the Al Qaeda and Taliban problem had been dealt with. “They (Bush administration) is building up Musharraf as some kind of world leader. Then they will abandon it (Pakistan).”

A Republican by conviction, Bothra said he did not see much progress during the Clinton administration when India was being forced to sign a nuclear treaty, even though the U.S. Congress had rejected it. He also blamed the erstwhile Democratic administration for referring to Kashmir as a “disputed” territory. President Bill Clinton’s visit to India and the pressure on Pakistan, though, were the two plus points of the previous administration, he said. President Bush on the other hand, Bothra said, had been “bullish” about India even during his campaign. However, he said, 9/11 intervened.

India’s Consul General in Chicago Surendra Kumar said: “There are no love affairs and infatuations in international diplomacy,” adding that 9/11 was a watershed in the collective consciousness of the world. “It is ironic that the country that was a problem was going to be part of the solution.”

Nevertheless, he said that Washington was showing a greater “appreciation and understanding” of the Indian position. “There is enough justification for the international community to pressure Pakistan to desist support of terrorist camps,” Kumar said. “We hope that the enormous clout of the U.S. will be used to convince Pakistan.”

Earlier, Durbin said the events following the terror attacks had both positive and negative effects on America. He said the positive aspect was the strengthening of the sense of unity among Americans. At the same time, he said that several constituents had complained of the negative stereotypes and how someone or other had been swept away by police and kept without counsel in detention.

In the days and months following the incident, there were numerous reports of South Asians, including some Indian Americans, being subjected to discrimination since their origins were mistaken as being Middle Eastern.

“We have to balance issues of security and liberty,” said Durbin. He added that immigration had been especially affected by 9/11, and noted that he himself was a first-generation American of Lithuanian heritage.

Durbin also said the U.S. was lucky to have so many people of Indian heritage coming to the country. “You’ve made this a great nation.”