AT a seminar our former foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri claimed that a solution to the Kashmir problem had been worked out under the Musharraf government.

And that all that was required was a signature on the relevant documents. If we have an iota of trust in what the foreign offices of the two countries say, then there is no — not even an infinitesimal — change in India's (or Pakistan's) position.

The Indian government lacks the political will to amend its constitution that defines Jammu and Kashmir as an Indian state. Even the 'constitution' of the occupied state provides seats for the area we call Azad Kashmir.

What Mr Kasuri touts as a signature-short Tom-Tom victory in Kashmir is actually a defeat. The autonomy-inclined proposal, propounded by Kasuri/Musharraf, is, if anything, a regurgitation of former Indian foreign secretary Jagat S. Mehta's proposals.

He presented his ideas in his article, 'Resolving Kashmir in the International Context of the 1990s' (Hindustan Times editor Verghese also gave similar proposals).

Mehta understood that plebiscite was the real solution. As such, his proposals were meant to serve as 'requirements' for the solution, not a solution. Some points of his quasi-solution are

(a) Conversion of the LoC into “a soft border permitting free movement and facilitating free exchanges...”

(b) Immediate demilitarisation of the LoC to a depth of five to 10 miles with agreed methods of verifying compliance.

(c) Pending final settlement, there must be no continuing insistence by Pakistan “on internationalisation, and for the implementation of a parallel or statewide plebiscite to be imposed under the peacekeeping auspices of the United Nations”.

(d) Final settlement of the dispute between India and Pakistan can be suspended (kept in a 'cold freeze') for an agreed period.

(e) Conducting parallel democratic elections in both Pakistani and Indian sectors of Kashmir.

(f) Restoration of an autonomous Kashmiriyat.

(g) Pacification of the valley until a political solution is reached.

It is eerie that India shrugged off Mehta's quasi-solution. But, wizards like Musharraf and Kasuri presented his major ideas as their own. Voracious readers may refer for detail to Robert G. Wirsing, India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute (1994, St Martin's Press). Let intellectual credit go where it belongs.

SAMAN MALIK
Rawalpindi