September 18, 2003	Thursday	Rajab 20, 1424

WASHINGTON, Sept 17: Israel’s natural counterpart in South Asia is not India but Pakistan, says a senior Israeli expert on South Asian affairs.

In an article published in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper and later reproduced in the United States, Yonatan Touval, says that Israel will be deceiving itself if it did not realize this key point while entering the South Asian arena as a player.

Mr Touval, a member of the policy planning team of Israel’s Economic Cooperation Foundation, says: “Pakistan is a country whose national aspirations seem entirely concentrated in a stubborn, not to say costly, quest for land it feels it lost in the Partition Plan of 1947.”

“In the case of Pakistan, the issue of Kashmir overshadows every other national and social issue, including that of illiteracy, which is perhaps the greatest barrier to Pakistan’s democratization and economic development,” he observes.

“Needless to say, Israel pays for its stubbornness with much the same currency,” he writes.

Pakistan’s position in the international arena, the author says, also reflects — if not the position Israel currently occupies — then the position that Israel seems sure to assume.