Negotiations on the whole range of issues dividing India and Pakistan are long overdue ... Neither side should seek to impose any conditions. The Jammu and KASHMIR SITUATION must obviously figure. This is the "core" issue for Pakistan and obviously cannot be relegated. Nor is there any reason to do so. As India insists on the Simla process, it must remember that the Simla Agreement specifically inscribed Kashmir as an item awaiting resolution.

There is certainly merit in taking the Kashmir bull by the horns without fussing about the number of working groups that meet, and when or where ...

Progress on less prickly issues should not become hostage to a resolution of the most difficult and sensitive issue - Kashmir ... Kashmir is the sticky problem. It will take time even to move from two very divergent political and emotional perceptions of the what, why and when of that question to the substantive issue of what now. The history, ultimately, had best be left to historians.

Overt nuclear parity rule out war. There are no military solutions, internal or external. Nor has side-stepping, howsoever, deft the dancing proved completely or finally evasive. The nature of the dispute can be questioned, not the fact. And both sides will have to admit sooner or later that it has an internal as well as an international dimension. For each, J&K has become a defining reality of their sense of nationhood. Each may denounce the other's perception. But these perceptions are a reality that will not go away and with which they must contend.

Finally therefore, both sides must accept current ground realities and proceed from that premise. This will not be easy. Pakistan will need to abandon cross-border support to militancy across the LOC. It cannot war, war and jaw, jaw at the same time.

When then is the ground reality. J&K is an artificial construct, a plural political conglomerate that happened in history but was undone in 1947-48. It has been divided over the past half-century along the Line of Control which, whether by accident or design, broadly demarcates an ethno-cultural boundary. The plea that the Kashmiris must decide confuses an ethnic with a political label. The Kashmiris are essentially confined to the Valley and adjacent districts within India.

The UN resolutions were rooted in a given time and situation. Why they were not implemented has been a matter of bitter contention. They cannot be selectively cited today. Those resolutions are dead ...

What then? This is where the talks must move from the past to the future, from bitterness to trust, from perpetuates a mutually unsatisfactory status quo to something both sides can live with, with honour and which the Kashmiris too would be happy to accept. This has to be a creative departure towards some kind of sharing within existing sovereignties. Independence can be completely ruled out.

What kind of sharing and how much? How to set about it and when? When what guarantees and linkages? All this will constitute the new agenda after history has been amply rehearsed. Elements of the final solution will evolve and unfold as the political climate improves and domestic opinion all round, including both sides of J&K, comes to recognise practical options that serve the common good. Public education is needed, not propaganda ... The status quo is inimical to both sides. India may be stronger, but it cannot win. Nor can it take comfort from Pakistan failing economically or disintegrating politically. This would pose new dangers and destibilise South Asian and invite foreign intervention. A strong and stable Pakistan is in India's highest interest.                                                      (Source: The Indian Express, 29 July, 1998)

Comments by Hari Om

In his article B.G. Verghese rules out independence for Kashmiris but recommends for them autonomy, bordering on sovereignty. He, in addition, vouches for a mechanism that gives co-equal powers to India and Pakistan as far as their claim to Jammu and Kashmir is concerned ...

Verghese would do well to revise his formulations and come out with a solution acceptable to as wide a spectrum of population as possible. The best thing for him would be to urge the Union Government to trifurcate the state into Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh states and set up a security zone in the Valley for the internally-displaced Kashmiri pandits.

(Source: The Indian Express, 10 August, 1998)