Today everyone agrees that Kashmir cannot be resolved without involving the militants ... Who is really behind the peace offensive? Has Pakistan made the move voluntarily, realising the high costs of nurturing militancy in the Valley? Or, is the US once again pushing Pakistan and India into talking peace? The first is the most favoured scenario with our security establishment: Post-Kargil, Pakistan is so bankrupt that it must sue for peace or fail as a state..

There's a problem with this line, though. Pakistan will never approach India from a position of weakness. On the contrary, the public posture of Pakistani decision-makers even today is that India is militarily vulnerable.

So, it is clear that India and Pakistan are being nudged to the negotiating table by the US. This is not mere speculation, but a surmise based on hard evidence. The Hurriyat leaders say they were released under US pressure. They also admit to considering various formulae put forward by US-based intermediaries, including the Kashmiri Study Group ... The Hizbul's political leadership has also been involved in meetings with American intermediaries both in Washington and Islamabad. Even more significantly, the government's response comes within a day of Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra's return from the US.

What is so very wrong with all this ?... We just have to go back to the Lahore bus trip to understand the dangers of forced diplomacy ... If we pursue the US line once again, without genuinely working for a broader consensus. the illusory peace will surely give way to more violence.

The opposition from almost the entire spectrum of militancy to the Hizbul offer tells us that we have not even managed a minimum consensus on the issue. For India, there is another, bigger worry. And this has to do with the kind of solutions doing the rounds in Srinagar. Almost all of them envisage the separation of the Kashmir Valley from Jammu and Ladakh on communal lines ... Sometime ago, an RSS functionary publicly mooted the trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir. In recent weeks, several Hindu organisations have sprung up, with the trifurcation of J&K as their main demand. In its regional autonomy report, the Farooq Abdullah government, too, suggests eight communal divisions for the state.

Communal division of the state and handing over the Valley to Pakistan may look like two different things, but one will definitely lead to the other ... The US may bring together the Hindu right and the Muslim right, but not the rest of the country. (Source: The Times of India, 30 July, 2000)