Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 29, 2010
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Forget-Kashmir-worry-about-your-own-survival-Krishna-to-Pak/articleshow/6652822.cms#ixzz10yoo6fNy
Forget Kashmir, worry about your own survival.
This was the blunt message India's external affairs minister SM Krishna gave
Pakistan after Islamabad's familiar rhetoric on Kashmir at the United Nations
through its foreign minister SM Qureshi scuttled an expected meeting between
the two.
In some of the sharpest language emanating
from India, the normally affable Krishna taunted Pakistan and its representative
for using the Kashmir issue as a "ploy" to deflect attention from
its parlous internal situation arising from governance issues related to home-grown
terrorism and the recent floods.
Pakistan, Krishna suggested, ratcheted up
the Kashmir issue whenever things were going well for India or going badly
for Pakistan in a "pattern" that had been going on for sixty-plus
years.
Indeed, for three days preceding Krishna's
response, Qureshi cranked up rhetoric on Kashmir in a throwback to the 1990s,
including at a UN address in which he demanded that Kashmiris should be allowed
to exercise their right of self- determination "through a free, fair
and impartial plebiscite under the United Nations auspices" and referred
to human rights abuses in Kashmir. Earlier, he also sought US intervention
in the matter.
Krishna's terse response, in which he pointedly
referred to the "Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir," included telling
an Asia Society audience that New Delhi had held many referendums in the state
in form of universally recognized elections, an oblique dig at the military
dominated neighbor.
In an earlier comment, Krishna had said Pakistan
should "vacate" the part of Kashmir it occupies (as called for by
the UN resolution), a point that New Delhi seldom makes, but seems to have
been provoked into remembering because of Islamabad raising the stakes through
Qureshi.
"Such unsolicited remarks will not and
indeed, cannot, divert attention from the multiple problems Pakistan needs
to tackle for the common good of its people, and of the entire region,"
Krishna said about Qureshi's rants on Kashmir in New York.
The indirect exchanges ensured that the two
foreign ministers left New York for home without a formal meeting, and the
incremental progress on the Kashmir issue made through back channels during
the past decade, based on which the US is also pushing for a resolution, remains
on ice.
In fact, the growing feeling in New Delhi
and Washington is that Qureshi is merely fronting for a hard-line Pakistani
military which is not inclined towards peace with India because it finds dividends
in continued attrition and confrontation.
Indeed, Krishna's decision not to meet Qureshi
came amid continued Pakistani resistance to act on the Mumbai terrorist attack
perpetrators. In fact, it transpires that Pakistan's arrest of the key planner
of the attack, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, is a sham.
In his book, Obama's War, Bob Woodward quotes
US National Security Advisor Jim Jones as telling Pakistani leaders that Lakhvi
is not being adequately interrogated, and more shockingly, "he continues
to direct LeT operations from his detention center."
The books also reveals most of the US leadership
regards Pakistan Army Chief Kayani as a two-faced liar, and that Pakistan
has not really given up on its sponsorship of terrorism.
Still, for form's sake, Krishna said Qureshi
was welcome to visit India for "some of" the Commonwealth Games
where they could pick up the threads of the now tattered dialogue. Before
he left New York, Qureshi, who has been insisting that he wants a "result-oriented
dialogue" and not a photo-op, gave no indication if he would go to New
Delhi for the Games -- or talks.
