A four point framework to resolve Kashmir dispute

At the launch of former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s memoirs-‘Neither A hawk, Nor A Dove’ the leading lights of India’s political establishment of yester-years-former prime minister Manmohan Singh, former home minister and deputy prime minister L K Advani and a host of other former union ministers spent more than an hour listening to four contrasting viewpoints- Kasuri’s from Pakistan, Dr Farooq Abdullah from Kashmir, Yashwant Sinha of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Mani Shankar Aiyar of the Congress (also both ex-IFS officers) and the rather officious tone of the Pakistan High Commissioner in India Abdul Basit.

The four-way conversation moderated by television anchor Nidhi Razdan gave ample glimpses of the reasons due to which the Indo-Pak relationship is at such a stage where the two prime ministers can only wave at each other when they find themselves in the same room at the United Nations. For Kasuri the reasons for this state of affairs rest with India.

“Just look at the record of the statements. Pakistan’s reactions come only after the Indian side makes a comment,” he said while arguing that there is a tactical and not a strategic shift in the Pakistan army’s position. For Dr Abdullah who made the most passionate intervention pleading for peace between the two neighbours within his life time, the relationship is bedevilled by vested interests.

“There are vested interests on both sides, but the time has come to say enough is enough,” he said while stressing that the people have already the price in 1947 and there should be no more bloodshed. Sinha stressed the futility of an official Indo-Pak dialogue as long as the ground conditions do not change.