11 October 2004	Monday	25 Shaban 1425

KARACHI, Oct 10: The need for a dialogue among the important parties to the Kashmir conflict, including India, Pakistan and Kashmiri groups, was stressed by the participants of a workshop on conflict resolution , who recommended that any attempt to impose a solution of the Kashmir conflict will be counter productive.

Solution to the Kashmir conflict must come from within the people of Jammu and Kashmir, they emphasized. The regional workshop on teaching and research methods in conflict resolution also recommended that the South Asian countries must establish a water management regime, and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) should play its role for the resolution of water conflicts in the region.

The workshop was organized under a programme in peace studies and conflict resolution, department of international relations, Karachi University, in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission, Islamabad.

Renowned scholar and researcher Dr Kumar Rupesinghe, chairman, Foundation for Peaceful Coexistence, Colombo, Sri Lanka, was of the view that without peace the South Asia could neither be made secure, nor the region could make progress.

He elaborated the various methodologies for conflict resolution, and in this context referred to rapid response mechanism and intervention strategies, in the light of Sri Lanka's experience with the Tamil issue.

He also discussed the strategy of making citizens a major stake holder in the process of transformation and promoting multi-track diplomacy. Dr Amena Mohsin, Professor at the IR department, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, believed that the South Asian people were assimilative and cooperative.

She further said globalization was creating certain challenges for the developing world. She also mentioned that extremism could plague any society, and each society must resist such tendencies. She also talked about the rise of religious extremism in Bangladesh, which was also experiencing a wave of sectarian violence against Ahmadiyya community.

She also noted that security scenario had become complicated due to criminalization of politics. She was of the view that the role of the South Asian Diaspora as a bridge-building mechanism should be explored because the South Asian community living abroad, though polarized at times, did interact with each other.

She was of the view that for a meaningful security strategy it was necessary to evolve and promote a system based on reason, tolerance and pluralism. She also emphasized the need to examine whether the states were equipped or positioned to meet the demands made on them. She also discussed Bangladesh's experiences and the impact of 9/11 on conflicts and their management.

Dr Shaista Tabassum, Assistant Professor, IR department, KU, in her paper focused on the mechanism that could resolve water disputes between India and Pakistan. She suggested to promote culture of greater accommodation regarding the issues of water management, and asserted that these issues were not essentially un resolvable.

She was of the view that the world community had so far failed to reach a consensus on a definite mechanism for resolving water issues. Such conflicts, however, were resolved whenever they had arisen according to the situation, rather than on the basis of customary principles of international law, she added.

In the South Asia, she said, three major water distribution conflicts had developed and were settled through treaties- the Indus Water Treaty, the Mahakali Treaty and Frarrakha Barrage Treaty. She observed that Saarc could be activated to resolve water-related conflicts in the South Asia.

There was a great gap between state and society in the South Asian countries, but the people were increasingly becoming vocal and they had greater freedom of expression, said Dr Mehtab Ali Shah, Professor at the IR department, Sindh University, Jamshoro.

He believed that the state structure deeply shaped the views and ideas of the people. However, people had begun questioning the very veracity and truthfulness of the dogmatic way of thinking.

About Kashmir, Dr Shah observed that the issue needed to be viewed in greater openness and the people of Kashmir must be incorporated in the peace process.

There should be an internal as well as external dialogue about the issue, he added. Giving the examples of Europe, he mentioned that these societal approaches could be highly useful in conflict resolution regarding the outstanding issues.

Salma Malik from department of defence and strategic studies of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, in her presentation, stressed upon the necessity of expanding the process of peace in the South Asia. Moreover, she suggested, Kashmiris must be an essential component of conflict resolution between India and Pakistan.

The world had radically changed after the fall of Soviet Union, and it again changed on September 11, 2001, said Dr Mutahir Ahmed, Assistant Professor, IR department, KU, in his presentation on alternative approaches for conflict resolution in the South Asia.

There was also simulation exercise in the afternoon session of the workshop, done by the students of the IR department, KU, which covered the areas of Indo-Pak composite dialogue. Dr Moonis Ahmar, Programme Director, presented recommendations of the two-day workshop at the concluding session.