By IANS
New Delhi : The crisis in Pakistan “threatens” the whole world and President Pervez Musharraf should restore “transparent democratic order” and stability in the country, said US civil rights leader and Democratic Party veteran Jesse Jackson here Tuesday.
“The suspension of democracy and the state of emergency in Pakistan is testing the United States’ and the world’s resolve, and its moral authority and its quest for freedom,” Jackson said here while delivering the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture at Teen Murti Bhavan.
“We must choose the bargaining table over the battlefield, and co-existence over co-annihilation, and use guided minds, not misguided missiles,” Jackson said ahead of his trip to Pakistan.
Jackson is likely to go to Pakistan Wednesday morning to meet Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the two key players in Pakistan politics, and help in promoting reconciliation between them.
Jackson, an ally of the legendary American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, was a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination twice in 1984 and 1988.
Congress president and India’s ruling coalition chair Sonia Gandhi, who invited Jackson to deliver the lecture, introduced him as “a fearless crusader for civil rights who played an important role in awakening the conscience of a nation”.
Gandhi also eloquently invoked the legacy of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and recalled his profound commitment to secular values.
“The burden is upon Mr Musharraf to restore transparent democratic order and stability to his country. I hope he will heed the world’s pleas; the whole world is watching,” said Jackson.
“The crisis next door in Pakistan threatens the whole world family. But it is not merely a crisis, it is an opportunity for us to play a unique role in resolution, to adjudicate a dispute that could trigger world destruction,” Jackson said.
Invoking the broad humane vision of Mahatama Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jackson said that war “is a moral and intellectual failure”, and stressed that the world sorely needed the redemptive power of non-violent reconciliation.
“We remember Gandhi, Dr. King, Nehru, and Jesus, and Mandela, but too often we do not adhere to their lessons of peaceful coexistence over threats of war and annihilation,” he said.
Saying that “the soul force of love, truth and reconciliation” unleashed by Mahatma Gandhi over hundred years ago have “outlasted guns and bombs and schemes of oppressive rule”, the iconic civil rights leader espoused globalisation with a humane face that can eliminate poverty, illiteracy and diseases.
“Globalisation is full of promises and peril. Global energy can warm us and transport us – or it can be used to manipulate prices to control and polarize us,” he said.
“Or it can instigate a war in Iraq or sustain a genocidal war in Darfur,” he added.
“Let’s not forget 9-11-1906, when Mahatma Gandhi emerged declaring satyagraha as the lasting, enduring truth and source of joy. No cowardly acts of violence can put out the light of Gandhi’s insight and commitment to truth,” he said eloquently.
“9-11 has a dark side, if we just reference 2001. 9-11-1906 unleashed the light, transformed nations, and cannot be put out,” he added.