Washington: The United States has a role to "nudge" India and Pakistan into a joint search for positive relations, not in trying to invent, much less enforce, a Kashmir solution, says K S Bajpai, former Indian Ambassador to the US, China and Pakistan.

In an article in journal 'Foreign Affairs', he writes that if US encouragement can stimulate progress in improving Indo-Pak ties, a solution to Kashmir will eventually become possible. The ultimate responsibility, however, lies with the two neighbours themselves.

India and Pakistan both face a common enemy in the form of terrorism; only a new effort at co-operation will rid the region of this scourge, says Bajpai, who is former secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs and former visiting fellow at Stanford University.

He notes that the US "has made it clear that it cannot exercise any greater pressure on Pakistan to give up cross-border terrorism because it needs Pakistani co- operation against the Taleban and al-Qaida. It is, of course, an old wild West custom for the sheriff to co-opt the gunslinger in hunting bigger outlaws."

Musharraf, he says, confronts severe obstacles in any effort to root out Islamic extremism on Pakistani soil. Islamists carry weight in the country and are said to be beyond government control.

In addition, the Pakistani Army feels an irresistible temptation to use terrorists in its campaign against India in Jammu and Kashmir. As a result, Pakistan has sought to let cross-border terrorism in Kashmir continue, as though exempt from the international war against terror.

India, he says, could have overcome challenges within Kashmir if there were no Pakistani support to separatism.

Pakistan, says Bajpai, seeks a drastic change in the status quo in Kashmir. What Pakistan demands of India is what only a country defeated in war could ever be expected to surrender. For that simple reason alone, holding Indo-Pak relations hostage to Kashmir is deeply unproductive.

The fundamental fact, he says, is that there is no parallel in history to the modern Indian state. Never have so many diverse groups – linguistic, racial, regional and religious – in such large numbers been encompassed within a democratic framework.

He draws a striking contrast between the treatment of minorities in Pakistan and in India. At the time of partition, there were some 11 to 15 million Hindus and Sikhs in what is now Pakistan. Today there are virtually no Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan.

By contrast, there were 35 million Muslims in India on partition and today they number 140 million – more Muslims than Pakistan has. This simple fact, he says, reveals the two states' differing approaches towards minorities.

The policy of using terrorism to try to snatch Kashmir out of Indian hand has strengthened within Pakistan forces that threaten that country's stability as much as India's. It is for Pakistan to decide if the game is worth the candle.

Bajpai recommends that India step back from its insistence that talks with Pakistan commence only when terrorism is stopped altogether. A substantial reduction in attacks, which has yet to materialise, should be sufficient. Second, he wants India to "openly accept the US as a facilitator of serious Indo-Pakistan dialogue".

PTI