LAHORE: Former foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri has urged nuclear neighbours Pakistan and India to show restraint since both are equally capable of destabilising each other.

He makes the point in his forthcoming book ‘Neither a Hawk, nor a Dove’ to be published by the month end.

He writes in the book that the two countries have no option but to go for a just, negotiated and a peaceful solution to Jammu and Kashmir and other contentious issues between them. He says that he knows on the basis of his experience as a former foreign minister that both the countries have major fault lines and that both are equally capable of destabilising each other. This, he feels, has left them both with no option but to act in a responsible manner since the fate of almost 1.5 billion people living in the two countries depends on that.

The title of the book is based on the first line in the book in which former President Pervez Musharraf has been quoted in his very first meeting with the new foreign minister as asking him pointedly, “Are you a hawk or a dove on India, Kasuri Sahib?”

The book is being published worldwide by the Oxford University Press and by Penguin in India.

It contains the insider’s account by someone who has been a part of the developments regarding the back channel negotiations on Kashmir and the peace process from 2002 to the end of 2007.

Mr Kasuri has updated the book to November 2014, including the advent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India and the current policies of the new Indian government. He has analysed the situation in the backdrop of the latest developments in India, Afghanistan and Pak-US relations.

The ‘back channel diplomacy’ during his tenure as foreign minister, as well as the peace process is generally acknowledged as the most successful between the counrties since independence. It helped a lot in providing a framework for a possible solution to Jammu and Kashmir, as well as on other issues haunting the ties between the two countries.

Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf and former Indian prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, are on record as having confirmed this. These efforts increased the quantum of trade and helped encourage people-to-people contact. They also helped usher in a period of cease fire on the LOC in 2003 which lasted for almost 10 years, which is in great contrast to the current state of hostility.

Mr Kasuri also gives an account of his interactions with the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership since the peace process started under ex-prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpaee. Besides, he mentions details as well as the backgroundof these landmark developments, beyond the so-called ‘four-point formula’ often referred to in the media.

The former foreign minister has also devoted an entire chapter on the attitude of the Pakistan Army towards the peace process with India and on the Kashmir framework.

Published in Dawn January 15th , 2015

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