A noted American scholar on Tuesday said that there are real concerns in India as to what would happen in case Pakistan unravels under the current situation in that country.
"In a way they (Indians) are starting to get very edgy as to what could happen if Pakistan really unravels and whether in that case there would be millions of Pakistanis trying to cross the border to enter India," Daniel Markey, Council for Foreign Relations' senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia, said.
Markey said during his recent visit to India he heard a number of Indian raising this issue.
"There are real concerns on that, which they feel would be fundamentally destabilising for India," he said.
He said there are real concerns in India about Pakistan becoming a weakened, a failing state unlike in the past when concerns in India mainly revolved about Islamabad being a rival, a challenger or a threatening state.
"The sense in most circles in India really shifted in the past couple of years and in many ways that is a healthy thing because India recognises Pakistan's weakness is not India's strength," he said.
"Unfortunately Indians does not have much political leverage on Pakistan," he added.
Asked what should the United States be doing in Pakistan now, he said his sense is that the Bush administration at this stage has taken an approach which is publicly scolding and voicing some serious displeasures about the steps that have been taken by the President Musharraf.
But he said there is not a lot or nearly enough in the way of ongoing, high level communication precisely as to what the US would like to see out of the Musharraf government.
He said in other words, probably President Bush has been saying that this (emergency) is not a step that the US would like to see, but the administration has not said what exactly Washington would like to see happening in the coming days or weeks.
"From my point of view what we should be pushing for is a timetable saying by this day, some of the prisoners should be released, or the Election Commission should come out with a date for elections or the restriction on the press should be lifted etc. If we do not say anything like that there is no way we are going to see elections and then we will have a problem," Markey said.
But he admitted that although the United States has the most leverage on Pakistan of all countries, excepting China, still that is not adequate "to make the country rethink the steps or what Islamabad thinks is in its national interest, or in this case Musharraf's personal interest."
"So there are real limits on the US," he said adding that when Pakistan wants to take steps that the US does not want it to, Islamabad anyway goes ahead. "Historically this is true," he said.
