Before saying yes or no, or maybe, to Indian peace initiatives, we have to settle one question in our minds. Is any move towards normalization a favour to India or does it serve our interests too?

We should be doing no favours to India or indeed to any other country. Every country looks out for itself, or should. France, China or the Holy Roman Empire, self-interest has always ruled foreign policy. There's no reason for us to be different.

If normalization serves Indian interests alone, and shortchanges us, then we should be against normalization. If belligerence serves us better, bellicosity should be the permanent motto inscribed on our national banner.

War and peace are not moral imperatives. The history of the human race has been shaped by war. Wars have been fought to advantage while peace is not always an unmixed blessing. Indeed, a victor's peace, imposed from outside, can be a pain in the butt (consult Iraqi opinion on this score).

How does our balance sheet stand? What say the lessons of the past 56 years? We have tried wars and intransigence. They have brought us nothing but pain and expense. While peace, not of the one-step-forward-and-two-steps-back kind but enduring peace, has remained an untested proposition.

So what should we do? Keep the doors locked and stick to the old ways or explore new avenues leading not to surrender but to normality?

Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha has presented a set of proposals envisaging freer travel between India and Pakistan. A bus link between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, a similar link across the border at Khokhrapar, a ferry service between Karachi and Bombay, talks on renewing rail and air links, resumption of sporting ties and better visa facilities. And a few items more.

Elsewhere on the planet such initiatives would invite derision. Look where the world is going and India and Pakistan are still stuck on visa formalities. But between India and Pakistan these are momentous initiatives. Remember that in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

What should Pakistan do? Meet India halfway or draw the wagons into a circle and retreat into a bunker?

The easiest thing in the world is to nitpick or say no. It's much harder breaking the mould of accepted routine and trying something fresh. All the more so for two countries which have not only fed on intransigence but turned it into a subcontinental speciality, the babu's passion for red tape turned into an immutable principle of foreign policy.

This is an outmoded legacy and we should say goodbye to it. Not out of any misplaced sentiment or love for lighting peace candles at the Wagah/Attari border. But because the world has moved on and we risk being left behind.

Let us stick to our differences. Let us keep burning incense at the altar of Kashmir. Who says we give up our cherished beliefs or whatever we hold sacred? But what on earth are we gaining from the present policy of closed minds and unending hostility?

Look at our investment in hatred. Our two militaries are amongst the world's biggest. Huge defence establishments now capped with the dubious glory of nuclear weapons. By all means, let us keep our nuclear arsenals. The old justifications for going nuclear stand immeasurably reinforced by America's neo-con doctrine of pre-emptive war and America's wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Let both our countries not be naked to external blackmail. But at the same time, there is little sense in wasting precious resources on a policy of point and counterpoint which, far from bolstering security, serves only to diminish it.

India and Pakistan have to realize a simple truth. India will be thwarted in its ambition to achieve great power status as long as its relations with Pakistan are fraught. Pakistan cannot liberate itself from external bondage, from the necessity of seeking unfavourable alliances with the United States, as long as it considers India to be its principal contradiction.

There was bitterness and hostility between the Hindu and Muslim communities before 1947. But partition should have taken care of that. India is India and we are we. Do we want to plant the banner of Islam on the ramparts of Delhi's Red Fort? Does India want to undo Pakistan? The answer is no on both counts. Then why the distrust? What reason for the subcontinent's babu curtain, the world's second-last, to be still in place? (The last curtain of course being the cement wall Israel is raising along the West Bank.).

Ah, but there's Kashmir. So there is but what of it? We have our position and India has hers. And while we believe our position to be just and India's wrong, three and a half wars, Kargil being the half-volley, should teach both our countries the lesson that there is no military solution to this dispute. If recourse to arms could have settled the matter, Kashmir's fate would have been decided long ago.

So let us stick to our position and let us not say, as President Musharraf has more than once, that for a settlement on Kashmir both countries would have to go beyond stated positions. This is not a question of bargaining. Our case is that the Kashmiris have been denied their right of self-determination (although we'll be a lot more convincing on this subject if we attained something higher than military-dictated self-determination at home). And that they are being robbed of their aspirations by force. No sooner we modify this position than we don't have a leg to stand on.

But while sticking to this principle, let us rid ourselves of the illusion that India can be forced to the negotiating table or that 'jihad' can wrest Kashmir from Indian control.

'Jihad' can embarrass India and to some extent bleed it in Kashmir. These would be worthwhile aims if 'jihad' were also not a two-way enterprise bringing more harm than good in its wake. Far more than any victories gained, it has caused problems for Pakistan, arousing international suspicion and at home acting as a spur to religious extremism.

There should be no sell-out on Kashmir, no turning the Line of Control into an international frontier. At the same time, we should have the wisdom to realize that there is going to be no Kashmir solution now or in the foreseeable future. One of history's left-overs, it will be solved by history. Taking a leaf from our Chinese friends we should operate on the Taiwan principle: rigid theory, flexible practice.

We need to move on, not for India's sake but for our own. Across the wide expanse of the Muslim world there are only two economic success stories: Mahathir's Malaysia and the city-state of Dubai. If Pakistan is to mean anything, if what with some historical licence we call the Pakistani dream is to mean anything, Pakistan must become the third. But only if we can rethink India, only if we stop defining Pakistani nationhood in terms of India hostility.

So let us not shy away from meeting India halfway on the road to reconciliation. We are not a cardboard nation and no nation on earth can swamp us. If we get rid of our fears and phobias, and stop allowing old prejudices to dictate present policy, there is really nothing to be afraid of.