US aid for Pakistan and pragmatic tolerance for President General Pervez Musharraf’s “anti-democratic tendencies” had helped keep Musharraf, a key US anti-terrorism ally, in power, a leading strategic think-tank said on Tuesday.
25 May 2005 - AFP
US aid for Pakistan and pragmatic tolerance for President General Pervez Musharraf’s “anti-democratic tendencies” had helped keep Musharraf, a key US anti-terrorism ally, in power, a leading strategic think-tank said on Tuesday.
And while Pakistan’s immediate tensions with India over the disputed Kashmir region had abated, India’s build-up of conventional arms “suggested the new government in New Delhi was sceptical about medium-term prospects for a new deal”, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in an annual report. The 384-page Strategic Survey 2004/5 said that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions remain the “most daunting security issue” facing Asia, but the risk of a Sino-US confrontation over Taiwan has increased. Six-nation talks about North Korea’s self-professed nuclear programme have made “almost no progress” since they began in 2003, the report added.
Pyongyang has boycotted the nuclear disarmament talks, which also involve the United States, South Korea, Russia, Japan and China, since June last year, and this February declared itself to be a nuclear-armed country. Nonetheless, the continued standoff has had some positive benefits for Washington, the IISS said. “Pyongyang’s roguish behaviour had the effect of strengthening Japan’s, South Korea’s and China’s relationships with the United States,” it said.
“With the continued diplomatic stalemate and North Korea’s slow motion nuclear build-up, the prognosis for resolving the crisis remains uncertain,” the report concluded. However, while the threat from North Korea has stayed generally stable, “the risks of a US-China confrontation over Taiwan appeared to increase incrementally”, the think-tank said. Tensions were raised in March, when China’s parliament passed an anti-secession law giving its military the legal basis to use “non-peaceful” means to halt any moves by Taiwan to formally declare statehood.
