The world is accustomed to sabre-rattling Indo-Pak rhetoric but nuclear sabre-rattling is another matter ...

... No US mediation in the region is possible unless America removes the distrust that trouble its relations with India. These tensions, rooted in the Cold War US tilt toward Pakistan, have been exacerbated by the sanctions imposed ...

No effective US mediation is possible unless an elected civilian government replaces the military regime in Pakistan. So long as the armed forces are in control, Islamic extremists will have far greater power than they've ever had ...

Even with a return to civilian rule, the road back to Lahore would be a rocky one. But the outlines of a possible Kashmir settlement are visible. The cornerstone of such a resolution would be mutual Indian and Pakistani recognition of the LoC as the permanent boundary. This would be accompanied by the termination of Pakistani support for the insurgency in Kashmir and the gradual reduction of the forces that both sides now deploy in Kashmir. But such a settlement would not be possible until both India and Pakistan negotiate autonomy agreements .with the Kashmiris under their control.

India, in particular, would have to show a new sensitivity to Kashmiri aspirations to soften the bitterness left by its brutal repression of the insurgency. As the war drags on, sentiment seems to be growing for autonomous status within India's Constitution as the only realistic way to end the bloodshed-but if, and only if, New Delhi is ready to grant enough autonomy.

The most important step that India could take to begin defusing tensions with Pakistan would be to ... spell out meaningful proposals for increased autonomy. Many of the autonomy demands made by chief minister Farooq Abdullah would have to be part of such proposals in order to cut through the bitterness left from a decade of fighting.

The argument made against Kashmir autonomy proposals has always been that India cannot give its only Muslim-majority state a degree of autonomy not enjoyed by other Indian states. My answer has been that autonomy for Kashmir could be folded into an overall restructuring of the Indian federal system in which all states would get greater power. This has sounded fanciful in earlier decades when a single majority party governed at the Centre. But the dispersion of power to regionally-based parties reflected in the present BJP-led coalition has changed the situation and the BJP itself has long opposed the existing degree of centralisation. The advocacy of a looser federal system by Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, a key figure in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, coupled with the pending increase in the proportion of central tax revenues to be allocated to the states, shows which way the wind is blowing.

In addition to projecting a new flexibility with respect to autonomy, India could offer to break up the existing J&K state as part of a settlement. Jammu and Ladakh could be incorporated into India and the Kashmir Valley split off as a separate entity. It is this new, truncated Kashmir state that would then receive increased autonomy.

Clinton could help to pave the way for an eventual settlement by publicly declaring US support for the LoC as the permanent boundary. This would make it clear to Pakistan that it will gain nothing by keeping the pot boiling in Kashmir ... A new US South Asia policy that gives India its deserved priority as a power eight times larger than Pakistan would help stabilise the area by showing Pakistan the futility of its present spoiler's role, especially if the US declared its support for the LoC as the basis for a settlement in Kashmir ...

... The restraint demonstrated by India during Kargil consolidated world opinion on India's side and New Delhi's task is to keep the onus on Pakistan as the disturber of the peace. Sooner or later, the military dictatorship in Pakistan will end and new opportunities for talking peace with Pakistan will then open up once again- if, in that time, India couples its military resolve in Kashmir with a new readiness to negotiate a workable political accommodation with representative Kashmiri  leaders. (Source: The Outlook, 13 March, 2000)