[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 64 (Tuesday, May 19, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5033-S5034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TROUBLING NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN SOUTH ASIA
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wanted to take just a little bit of time
this morning to again alert Senators and others about troubling new
developments in South Asia after India thumbed its nose at the world
community and exploded five underground nuclear weapons. Conditions
seem to be spiraling out of control in the nation of India. We now see
that a key Indian official, according to the news this morning, a key
Indian official is warning Pakistan and making very threatening,
provocative statements, about the area that we know as Jammu-Kashmir.
Indian Home Minister Advani--there is a picture of him here clenching
his fist, saying they were, basically, not going to have a peaceful
resolution at all of the situation in Kashmir. I am quoting from the
article:
While India's previous government had a policy of not
making hostile statements about Pakistan, the BJP [that is
the party that is now in power in India] as recently as two
years ago advocated ``reclaiming'' Pakistan's portion of
Kashmir.
It is interesting that:
In the course [it says here] of broadening its platforms
for this year's parliamentary elections--and cobbling
together a coalition government of 14 disparate parties--such
references to Kashmir were dropped. But Advani [the Home
Minister] was pointed in his reference today to the disputed
state, although he couched it more in terms of Pakistan's
stance toward Kashmir than India's.
But now Advani said, and I quote from the article:
[Nuclear weapons tests] has brought about a qualitatively
new stage in Indo-Pakistan relations and signifies--even
while adhering to the principle of no first strike--[that]
India is resolved to deal firmly with Pakistan's hostile
activities in Kashmir.
Wait a minute, Mr. President. He is talking about Pakistan's hostile
activities in Kashmir? It is India that has around 300,000 troops in
Kashmir. It is India that is spending about a large portion of its
military budget every year in Kashmir. It is by Indian troops that
human rights groups have said that in the last several years, perhaps
in the last 10 years, upwards of 13,000 people have been killed in
Kashmir--not by Pakistani troops, but by Indian troops.
What this Home Minister Advani is doing is trying to cover what India
has done in Kashmir by blaming it on Pakistan.
Quite frankly, Kashmir is the East Timor of South Asia, to those of
us who have followed the problems of East Timor, a tiny little island
nation on the eastern tip of Indonesia. It was a Portuguese colony for
several hundred years. When the Portuguese left, the Indonesians came
in to claim East Timor, but they have no rightful claim to it; it is a
separate island nation.
Since that time, East Timorese have been put to death by the
Indonesians, slaughtered, people driven out of their homes, driven out
of their jobs. What has happened in East Timor is a blight on
Indonesia, and the world community has spoken out forcefully against
what Indonesia has done in East Timor. But the world community is
standing silently by while the same kind of slaughter and repression is
occurring in the tiny state of Kashmir.
If you go back to when India and Pakistan were partitioned off, this
tiny area up in northwest India on the border of Pakistan and India,
the United Nations recognized in the late 1940s that this issue needed
to be resolved, and urged for it to be resolved through a plebiscite,
to have a vote of the people in this area: Did they want to stay with
Pakistan, or did they want to go with India?
But India refuses outside mediation, even from the UN. I had always
hoped, as many have hoped, that we would have some kind of a peaceful
resolution of Kashmir. But now India is shaking its fist at Pakistan
and speaking provocatively of reclaiming certain areas of Kashmir that
have already been recognized as being at least an adjunct to, adhering
to Pakistan, an area called Azad Kashmir.
Mr. President, I don't think we can idly stand by and let India
continue these kinds of provocative measures. The world community must
speak with one voice in condemning the actions by India with strong
sanctions. I will have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, which I hope
we can bring up sometime this week in conjunction with others, dealing
with the Indian explosion of nuclear weapons and dealing with the
Pressler amendment that Senator Brownback and I will be offering
sometime this week, I hope.
I have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution calling upon the United
States to take the lead in getting other nations together to act as an
intermediary in the dispute on Kashmir. Better that we act now, better
that we try to seek peaceful resolutions of Kashmir before this whole
thing blows up, before the BJP of India is able to take it to a higher
level, a more provocative level that would involve the use of arms.
I hope we can get the support of other Senators in asking the United
States to act as a mediator to this very dangerous situation that now
exists in Kashmir and South Asia.
I thank the President. I yield the floor.
Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I am on the floor this morning to introduce
a bill called the Emergency Medical Services Efficiency Act. My
statement is going to take about 10 or 15 minutes. I ask unanimous
consent that I be allowed to have up to 15 minutes, even though I know
it is going to run into the time of 10 o'clock.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much.
(The remarks of Mr. Grams pertaining to the introduction of S. 2091
are
[[Page S5034]]
located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and
Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much, Mr. President, for the time. I yield
the floor.
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