For the second time in a week, India and Pakistan have sparred over Kashmir in the United Nations. This time over the remarks of Pakistan’s Deputy Permanent Representative to United Nations Raza Bashir Tarar who described the lingering dispute over Kashmir as the legacy of the colonial times. The decolonisation agenda of the UN would be “incomplete without resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute,” Tarar said during the General Debate of the Special Political and Decolonisation Committee. In response, exercising India’s Right of Reply, First Secretary at the Indian mission Prakash Gupta reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. The fresh verbal duel comes in the wake of the war of words over Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s reference to Kashmir as the “symbol of failure of UN system” in his address to the General Assembly. External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, in response, lamented Zardari’s mention of Kashmir and asserted that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. Incidentally, this sparring has followed one of the most successful meetings between the foreign ministers of the two countries at Islamabad which resulted in the signing of the agreement on a liberalized visa regime. Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar even talked about a new approach to bilateral relations with India, “the mantra of future”. But a week into this “new approach,” India and Pakistan have positioned themselves rigidly on the opposite sides of the divide and ratcheted up their old rhetoric on the state. Pakistan has already returned to its historical stand on the dispute which makes the UN resolutions as the bedrock for the Kashmir solution. This is a far cry from the former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s radically flexible position on the settlement of the state. His four point proposals which envisaged a Kashmir solution without any radical geographical modifications and New Delhi’s gradual warming up to the ideas have all but vanished from the discourse. While it is unlikely that the bitter exchanges at UN would affect the friendly tenor of their current engagement, the two countries will need to give due space to the settlement of the long-festering political disputes to complement their ongoing thrust on forging an economic relationship. Only such an approach can safeguard dialogue from the intermittent treacherous turns in their relationship.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:00:00 IST