NEW DELHI, 20 May 2003 — India has once again rejected third party mediation to resolve its longstanding bloody dispute with archrival Pakistan over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

In an interview published in the Indian Express yesterday, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, who swapped portfolios with Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha less than a year ago, said no third party would have the “instinctive understanding” of the problem.

Citing past examples of mediation to solve the Kashmir dispute which had not worked, Singh said: “Do you realize that when you talk of a third party, you assume whoever it may be, the United Nations or anybody else, will have the instinctive understanding of what we are talking about? It will not.”

India and Pakistan on the other hand “understand each other’s nuances, which a foreign entity will never understand.

“India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are born out of the same womb,” Singh said referring to the emergence of India and Pakistan as independent nations at the end of British colonial rule in 1947.

Bangladesh became an independent country following the partition of Pakistan in 1971.

“We know not only each other’s language, but the pulse beat and blood flow of each other’s veins,” said Singh, who charted the course of India’s foreign policy since December 1998.

Singh said he was “mindful” of the fact that “Pakistan and India learn to absorb their differences and are able to at least chart a route map — on which to keep moving — to forsake bloodshed.

“Let Pakistan flourish and prosper within the borders of its political sovereignty but let it come to terms with its own identity and not seek that identity in a kind of atavistic and compulsive hostility to India,” he said.

Dialogue between India and Pakistan has been stalled for about 17 months after tensions spiraled following an attack on India’s Parliament complex in December 2001.

India blamed the attack on Pakistan-based extremists and the two sides deployed a million troops to their borders. The troops began to pull back in October after India said Pakistan had promised a US envoy it would stop support for an insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir.

CM Visits Kashmiris to Address Their Problems

If residents of Jammu and Kashmir were witness to gory acts of violence in certain areas since Sunday morning, in others they were pleasantly surprised to find Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed at their doorstep ready to address their problems. The latter signals a major political development. Rather than have Kashmiris remain familiar only with the guns stalking their streets, the chief minister has added a new touch of personal interaction by trying to reach out to them.

With the gun continuing to spell peril for Kashmiris, 12 people were killed when militants struck in Rajouri, Kathua and Poonch districts, police in Jammu said yesterday. Even though Indian police and media have described these incidents as militant acts of separatist rebels, the role of personal animosity in contributing to these crimes cannot be ruled out.

Suspected militants stormed the house of Special Police Officer (SPO) Khan Mohammad at village Kotedara and brutally killed six members of his family, including two children.