Off The Front Page.

(From Indian Express)

For them, we're only a part of this season of conflict. The 'deadly minuet' of threat and counter threat between India and Pakistan has now settled comfortably alongside the American troops' hunt for al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the cycle of terror and retaliation between Israel and Palestine, and the US campaign for 'regime change' in Iraq. Each of these conflicts runs on its own dynamic, conceded the WASHINGTON POST, but ''they all are now linked by President Bush's war on global terrorism''. They are 'moving parts' that Bush and his aides must 'manage individually' in ways that don't undermine the 'president's larger war goals.' In a fortnight when the American and British media obsessed about Iraq, South Asia briefly flashed into focus when US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revisited Asia. The NEW YORK TIMES acknowledged, if only in passing, the irony of the Armitage mission: he was pushing for assurances from India that elections in Kashmir will be free and fair in the same week that Washington's Most Favoured Dictator decreed 29 amendments to the Pakistani Constitution that put paid to any hopes of fairness in Pakistan's elections in October. Analysing Advani The British press mostly ignored L.K. Advani's trip to Britain. He was interviewed by THE TIMES, though. The paper noted that in London Advani was ''at pains'' to ''allay fears that he is a hawk''- playing down India's demands for a clampdown on British Muslims funding Kashmiri extremists and calling the Gujarat riots a 'blot' on his government's record. So, the TIMES's Foreign Editor asked, is Vajpayee's heir apparent ''as bad for the country and its neighbours as his critics say?'' His verdict was remarkably tight fisted: ''No, or at least, not yet.'' The paper said Advani shows 'little flexibility' on the issue where his influence is 'crucial'- Kashmir. It laid down two tests for him: the handling of Kashmir elections and relations with Pakistan, particularly after its October elections. But, it said, the broader question is: is government by the partition generation still good for Indian politics and foreign relations? The response to the visiting Indian cricket team was infinitely warmer. Ganguly's boys so outplayed England at Headingley, wrote the GUARDIAN, that Naseer Hussain's men must have been tempted to fill their dressing room with flannelled dummies, borrowed from the film Beau Geste in which dead French legionnaires were propped along the empty parapets. Rushdie's Fury It was writer Salman Rushdie's turn to admonish ...