WASHINGTON, Aug 2: The United States “has no solution (to) and no plans for resolving” the 56-year-old Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, said a senior US official.

Addressing a seminar at Washington’s Brookings Institution earlier this week, a senior State Department official urged India and Pakistan to try to resolve the dispute on their own rather than looking for outside help.

“I must say we have no vision of a solution. We don’t have plans for how to resolve the Kashmir dispute,” Gerry Fierstein, Director South Asia at the US State Department, told the seminar.

He also urged the two rival nations not to “ignore the will of Kashmiri people when they begin to talk to each other”.

“The Kashmiris have to have a choice. There views have to be there in any decision,” he added.

Mr Fierstein said the US government had no position on the UN-mandated plebiscite in Kashmir and it was up to India and Pakistan to decide whether they want a referendum or not.

“But we cannot say that we have to stick to” what people wanted 55 years ago.

A former adviser to the State Department and a well-known scholar of South Asian affairs, Marvin Weinbaum, was more forthcoming. He advised the Pakistanis “not to spend all your time” on a UN resolution “that happened 55 years ago.”

Mr Weinbaum also said that last summer India and Pakistan were very close to fighting another war over Kashmir and it was the United States, particularly Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who prevented a possible nuclear conflict between them.

He said since last summer relations between India and Pakistan had improved considerably. “It is very significant that India chose not to blame Pakistan for recent terrorist attacks in Kashmir. The Indians are not simply playing to the international gallery or appeasing their domestic lobbies. There seems to be a genuine desire to normalize relations with Pakistan.”

Agreeing with the observation, Mr Fierstein said, the United States was “relatively encouraged” by recent thaw in India-Pakistan relations, but warned: “This is not the time to rest. This is a time we need to do more in the direction of the positive side.”

The US government, he said, would focus “very closely” on the next South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit in Islamabad, where Indian and Pakistani leaders are expected to meet each other for the first time in more than two years.

Mr Fierstein also described the scheduling of civil aviation talks between the two South Asian neighbours later this month as “a significant move”.

But, it was the Saarc summit that the US government was “looking forward to”, he said.

“And this is something (we are) going to focus on very closely,” he added, stressing the need for normalization of relations between India and Pakistan.

He described recent confidence-building moves, such as the return of high commissioners, as “small but very significant moves towards dialogue”.