THE Obama administration assures India no threat from a Pakistan-US civilian nuclear deal similar to the Indo-US deal. But it is the Obama administration and particularly his Secretary of State, Ms Hillary Clinton who are responsible for giving rise to this suspicion in Indian minds.

On Wednesday, Ms Clinton, at the end of first day of her strategic dialogue with the Pakistan Foreign Minister, Mr Shah Mahmood Qureshi, did not deny that the US was not prepared to discuss a civilian nuclear deal such as it has with India. Maybe this was her tactics to engage Pakistan, but this is such an issue which cannot be pushed beneath the carpet. The Obama administration has to take a clear-cut stand. It should spell out the mechanism it intends to adopt for meeting the energy needs of Pakistan. One development which probably went unnoticed was while Ms Clinton claimed in Washington that a ‘new day’ had begun in ties between the US and Pakistan, the same day four Pakistan-based terrorist groups, including the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen took out a rally in PoK and pledged to step up their ‘jihad to liberate Kashmir’ from India as according to them diplomacy, talks and negotiations have failed. Naturally this development belies the claim of Ms Clinton that Pakistan is playing the central role for stability in the region and which is why its needs should be taken care of. Nothing could be more untrue than this. The Obama administration should realise that in its haste to provide equal treatment to Pakistan, in comparison to India, it was committing a political blunder and putting peace at stake in the entire region.