NEW DELHI, 14 October 2004 — Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf sees a “simple” solution to his country’s long dispute with India over Kashmir: New Delhi should pull troops out of the Himalayan territory and agree to a compromise over its status.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since a war that followed independence from Britain in 1947. Pakistan has always wanted a referendum to allow Kashmiris to choose which country to join. Musharraf said both sides needed to step back from these “maximalist” positions, but could find a solution in just a day if they really wanted to.
“It is simple — identify the region, demilitarize it and change its status,” he told India’s Asian Age newspaper in an interview published yesterday. Last year, Musharraf told Reuters he could set aside Pakistan’s demand for a referendum and meet India half-way.
At that time he also suggested Pakistan was not really interested in the mainly Hindu Jammu region or Buddhist Ladakh, but only in the central Kashmir valley, the heart of a 15-year insurgency against Indian rule. Some academics have suggested a solution based on joint Indian and Pakistani sovereignty of a largely autonomous Kashmir Valley, with India retaining full control of Jammu and Ladakh.
But that is a proposal which India’s government and people refuse to countenance. Instead many in India favor a compromise based on drawing a permanent border along the current cease-fire line dividing the armies in Kashmir, and perhaps offering Kashmiris limited autonomy on the Indian side.
Musharraf, speaking on Tuesday on the fifth anniversary of his taking power in a bloodless coup, said both sides needed to recognize the other’s concerns. “We are at present on a maximalist course: If there has to be an agreement, both sides have to step down,” he said.
“I am a realist not an idealist and I know that Pakistan cannot dictate terms to India, and also that there can be no military solution,” he said. “India must also realize that it cannot dictate terms or humiliate Pakistan, and that there can be no military solution.”
Musharraf said he came away from last month’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York with renewed hope. “The body language was very good,” he said. For the first time since Manmohan’s Congress party came to power in May, “I can see a ray of light at the end of the tunnel,” he added. But he also expressed frustration that the nuclear-armed neighbors had not made faster progress in talks this year. “Why should the next meeting be after six months when there is no reason? We should keep meeting and take the process forward,” he said. “How many times can we keep discussing options — once, twice, four times, six times, how much more can one discuss?”
Optimism rose in January when Musharraf appeared to strike up an unlikely rapport with India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. But when Vajpayee lost power to the center-left Congress party in May, some observers felt the chance for peace might slip away, with Manmohan’s coalition too weak, and too vulnerable to attacks from the right, to compromise over Kashmir.
