Forget Kashmir, worry about your own survival: Krishna to Pak-Sep 29, 2010,-

Forget Kashmir, worry about your own survival: Krishna to Pak

Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN, Sep 29, 2010, 07.35pm IST

Forget J&K, worry about your own survival: Krishna to Pak

WASHINGTON: Forget Kashmir, worry about your own survival. This was the blunt message India's external affairs minister SM Krishna gave Pakistan after Islamabad's familiar rhetoric on Kashmir at the United Nations through its foreign minister SM Qureshi scuttled an expected meeting between the two.

In some of the sharpest language emanating from India, the normally affable Krishna taunted Pakistan and its representative for using the Kashmir issue as a "ploy" to deflect attention from its parlous internal situation arising from governance issues related to home-grown terrorism and the recent floods.

Pakistan, Krishna suggested, ratcheted up the Kashmir issue whenever things were going well for India or going badly for Pakistan in a "pattern" that had been going on for sixty-plus years.

Indeed, for three days preceding Krishna's response, Qureshi cranked up rhetoric on Kashmir in a throwback to the 1990s, including at a UN address in which he demanded that Kashmiris should be allowed to exercise their right of self- determination "through a free, fair and impartial plebiscite under the United Nations auspices" and referred to human rights abuses in Kashmir. Earlier, he also sought US intervention in the matter.

Krishna's terse response, in which he pointedly referred to the "Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir," included telling an Asia Society audience that New Delhi had held many referendums in the state in form of universally recognized elections, an oblique dig at the military dominated neighbor.

In an earlier comment, Krishna had said Pakistan should "vacate" the part of Kashmir it occupies (as called for by the UN resolution), a point that New Delhi seldom makes, but seems to have been provoked into remembering because of Islamabad raising the stakes through Qureshi.

"Such unsolicited remarks will not and indeed, cannot, divert attention from the multiple problems Pakistan needs to tackle for the common good of its people, and of the entire region," Krishna said about Qureshi's rants on Kashmir in New York.

The indirect exchanges ensured that the two foreign ministers left New York for home without a formal meeting, and the incremental progress on the Kashmir issue made through back channels during the past decade, based on which the US is also pushing for a resolution, remains on ice.

In fact, the growing feeling in New Delhi and Washington is that Qureshi is merely fronting for a hard-line Pakistani military which is not inclined towards peace with India because it finds dividends in continued attrition and confrontation.

Indeed, Krishna's decision not to meet Qureshi came amid continued Pakistani resistance to act on the Mumbai terrorist attack perpetrators. In fact, it transpires that Pakistan's arrest of the key planner of the attack, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, is a sham.

In his book, Obama's War, Bob Woodward quotes US National Security Advisor Jim Jones as telling Pakistani leaders that Lakhvi is not being adequately interrogated, and more shockingly, "he continues to direct LeT operations from his detention center."

The books also reveals most of the US leadership regards Pakistan Army Chief Kayani as a two-faced liar, and that Pakistan has not really given up on its sponsorship of terrorism.

Still, for form's sake, Krishna said Qureshi was welcome to visit India for "some of" the Commonwealth Games where they could pick up the threads of the now tattered dialogue. Before he left New York, Qureshi, who has been insisting that he wants a "result-oriented dialogue" and not a photo-op, gave no indication if he would go to New Delhi for the Games -- or talks.