WASHINGTON (PTI): The Eisenhower administration believed that the Security Council debates on Kashmir in northern India were futile and suggested its partition between India and Pakistan but Jawahar Lal Nehru categorically rejected the American plan according to the latest declassified records of the state department.
The Americans claiming British support to their plan urged that India and Pakistan find a mutually acceptable partition formula on a basis other than the cease-fire line.
The partition proposal was presented to secretary of state John Foster Dulles who in turn gave it to Eisenhower in a letter dated April 101958 from assistant secretary of state for near east and south Asia William M. Rountree.
Dulles informed Eisenhower that “you will be pleased to hear that the British have wholeheartedly endorsed our proposal looking forward to lessening tensions between India and Pakistan.”
Security Council debates on Kashmir for which the Pakistanis were keen he said were “futile.”
Rountree in his proposal said: “We would hope that the principle of self-determination by the people of Kashmir might prevail if partition is a mutually acceptable solution consideration of the partition line should not be related in any way with existing military cease fire line.”
He then proposed certain bases for partition which includes regard for religious concentrations whenever possible contiguity to geographic area present district and administrative boundaries terrain and natural communications and trade routes present or potential irrigation and hydroelectric projects national security with particular reference to the northern frontiers and control over fiver segments or waterways in relation to any settlement of the Indus waters dispute.
In response to repeated American efforts to bring India and Pakistan together the Americans thought that the Chinese threat to Tibet would bring the two sub-continental nations closer but Prime Minister Nehru categorically rejected the American “package plan” for Indus water and Kashmir.
Nehru told Eisenhower that all Pakistan governments based their policy on “hatred against India” and that all the specific disputes between India and Pakistan were the result and not the cause of this hatred.
Third party negotiations Nehru firmly told the Americans were no solution because Pakistan the “aggressor” would be put on the same level as the victim.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 4, 1992
