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New Delhi: Pakistan's "bleed India" policy on Kashmir has confounded the expectations of strategists in Islamabad and the recent peace gestures by President Pervez Musharraf were seen as an indication that he was looking for a way to get out of Kashmir morass, says a Pakistani monthly magazine.

"Pakistan's rationale for its covert war in Kashmir has been two-fold. The first objective of the long term, low intensity war was to bleed India in the hope that it would eventually cut its losses and quit Kashmir," writes Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor in Quid-e-Azam University, in Karachi-based magazine "News Line".

"...India's resolve and strength have not been weakened. On the contrary, an unprecedented show of national unity emerged in India in response to Pakistan's infiltration of troops and militants across the line of control (LoC)," Hoodbhoy, who is an important member of Islamabad's think-tank, said.

"More significantly, confounding the expectations of Pakistani strategists, India's economy remained unharmed. Instead, it boomed. Its foreign exchange reserves currently stand at more than $ 70 billion and Indian scientific institutions are now being counted among the world's best.

"Its high tech companies alone last year brought in $ 10 billion foreign exchange, which is more than Pakistan's total foreign exchange holdings," he said.

"And so (Atal Behari) Vajpayee's peace move is welcome. There is indication that General Pervez Musharraf is looking for a way out of the Kashmir morass," he said.

The consequence of waging a covert war has been a steady loss of international support for "Kashmiri struggle....on the other hand India has successfully projected itself as a victim of covert terror."

The article "Rethinking Kashmir" also said that the world community, especially the United States, had its alarm bells ringing because of the fact of a militant movement in a nuclear-Pakistan and the recent naming of Hizbul Mujahideen by the US State Department as "other terrorist" outfits was seen as a set- up in this direction.

Hoodbhoy quoted noted Pakistani scholar and writer Eqbal Ahmad and passionately argued "although India's leaders bear much responsibility for Kashmir's tragedy, Pakistan's defective Kashmir policy has repeatedly managed to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory.

PTI