Negotiating a settlement: ‘US should join bid for Kashmir solution’

Envoy says Pakistan must be part of a political solution in Afghanistan.

GENEVA: The United States could play a key role in allaying Pakistan’s fears about India by getting involved in a solution to the Kashmir dispute, a senior Pakistani diplomat said on Friday.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Zamir Akram, said attempts by India and Pakistan to negotiate a settlement were derailed after 2006 by Hindu or Muslim “extremist” groups in each country. “Unfortunately the momentum has been lost,” he told journalists.

When asked what single short-term gesture could help allay Pakistan’s concerns about the strategic intentions of its neighbour, Akram said: “Something that Obama promised when he was a candidate for president but abandoned when he became president, that is, facilitate the solution to the Kashmir dispute.”

“That’s the gesture that the administration itself said it wanted to take and they should follow up on it,” he added.

Akram suggested that the west has been too intent on securing relations with its ally India to forge a bulwark against China   an ally of Pakistan   in Asia.

He pointed out that Pakistan’s concerns about its bigger neighbour stretch from nuclear weapons to energy supply, a strategic build-up in the region, and a fear of being surrounded to the west and east by neighbours with which it has tensions, Afghanistan and India.

Overall militant violence in the region has declined since India and Pakistan began a peace process in 2004. But the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir has been rocked by massive protests against New Delhi’s rule since June 2010, leaving some 111 protesters and bystanders dead.

Akram also said that Pakistan must be part of attempts to forge a political solution in Afghanistan rather than simply be urged to kill extremists on its territory. The Pakistani diplomat rejected the reliance on military options.

“What you are asking us to do is to pull your chestnuts out of the fire and be the bad guys. So we kill them while you talk to them,” he told journalists.

Akram underlined that the Taliban were part of native Pashtun tribes in the region and simply killing leaders in Pakistan’s remote western frontier areas was not viable “because we have to live with these people in the future”.

“It is absolutely essential for us that we be part of this approach that is where you bring a political solution to Afghanistan and not be part of only a military approach,” he added. “That’s where the crux is.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2011.