The United States is in “close in contacts with Pakistan,” and urged both India and Pakistan to continue communication with each other to “avoid escalation,” the White House has said. “We understand that India and Pakistan are in communication with each other,” White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said. “We have seen the reports and are following the situation closely,” a State Department official said.
He and a State Department official did not talk about the specific nature of contacts that the U.S is maintaining between India and Pakistan. The State Department official said the U.S has regular contacts with India at all levels.
“When NSA (Susan) Rice spoke to Indian NSA, she made clear it that the U.S is concerned about the danger posed by cross-border terrorism and is committed to deepening collaboration with India for combating terrorism,” Mr. Earnest said, adding that at the same time American is in close contact with Pakistan and value the “important partnership with Pakistan.”
Mr. Earnest and the State Department official did not specify whether any contact between the U.S and India has taken place after the conversation between the NSA of both countries. “ We have repeatedly expressed our concerns regarding the danger that cross border terrorism poses to the region, including the recent attack in Uri. We continue to urge actions to combat and de-legitimize terrorist groups like Lakshar-e-Taiba, Haqqani Network, and Jaish-e-Mohammed,” the State Department official said.
“Nothing much bigger,” said Stephen P. Cohen, Senior Fellow at Brookings, on what could happen next between India and Pakistan. “There could be an error on Pakistan's part, they might think that the Indians are bluffing; on India's side, they could think that they have the Pakistanis on the "run", but I don't think that either could happen.”
Michael Kugelman, Senior Associate for South Asia Program at the Wilson Centre, said it will be difficult for Pakistan to ignore the event. “Since India has went so public about this covert operation it claims to have carried out, it will be hard for Pakistan to simply ignore it—and even harder to continue denying that such an operation took place,” he said.
“Pakistan has several options. It could do nothing, which would certainly score it some points with Washington, which is increasingly worried about escalation. Or it could encourage its non-state assets to carry out more attacks in J&K. At the very least, we can expect the Pakistanis to continue to go full speed ahead with its saber rattling, in order to appease public anger,” he said.
Mr Kugelman said the U.S would intervene to avoid an escalation of the situation. “The US does not want the situation to escalate any further, so you can imagine it will work the phones with key interlocutors in Pakistan and India to encourage the two sides to dial down the tensions. Given the depths of the current crisis in India-Pakistan relations, however, I’m not sure how successful Washington can be in this regard for now, and Washington likely recognizes this,” he said.
