Straw on Kashmir!
By the Editor

BRITISH Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that Kashmir issue should be resolved through dialogue. Speaking at a reception in Gujrat on Tuesday, he said that there may be set-backs or frustration in the process, but the other option being war, will never serve the purpose.

That Pakistan firmly believes in the dialogue process is amply proven from its perseverance to seek negotiated settlement of the Kashmir dispute over the decades. What’s disgusting, however, is India’s belligerence to address the Kashmir issue and British apathy towards it.

Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of the Indian Partition Plan and as such a greater responsibility devolves on Britain to play a positive role for settlement of this festering dispute.

It’s, however, deplorable that not only the last British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten had viciously truncated the Partition Plan to provide India access to Kashmir, but the British Government has also remained totally oblivious to its obligations to resolve the Kashmir issue over the decades.

The fact is that the Kashmir issue had emerged due to the deliberate violation of the Partition Plan by Mountbatten and as such the British Government is morally bound to accept responsibility for his blunder and to convince India to vacate its aggression from occupied Kashmir.

It’s regrettable that Mr Jack Straw’s assertion is a pretentious cry over the spilled milk rather than a repentance for Mountbatten’s folly. We are constrained to point out that the British stance towards the issue is neither objective nor fair.

India is the usurper and is indulging in brutalizing the Kashmiri people through massive State terrorism and the British Government is playing Niro’s flute despite being responsible for Kashmiris’ subjugation.

Morality demands that Britain should shun its colonial mindset of divide and rule and strive to end the Indian occuption of Kashmir by supporting the Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom from New Delhi’s yoke.

The Kashmir issue cannot be resolved through rhetoric or mere calls for the dialogue process. Britain ought to exert its influence and convince India that the settlement of the Kashmir dispute is not only in the interest of peace in South Asia, but also in India’s own interest on many counts. It will generate security, progress and socio-economic development for the impoverished Indian people, half of them are living below the poverty line.●