NEW DELHI: The contention of James Clad, a US policy analyst that the Narasimha Rao government is ready to strike a deal with Pakistan over Kashmir is not substantiated by Indian officials and key Congress leaders.

Claiming that there was a “new think” in New Delhi that a permanent partition of the disputed territory could resolve the issue, Clad, a former journalist who worked in New Delhi and is now a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, has reportedly said that senior Indian officials had implied that he float a balloon to see the effect,

But inquiries here over recently revealed that no key official those in the Prime Minister’s office, the cabinet secretary the home secretary had even met Clad in recent times, leave alone float such ideas. Clad has chosen not to reveal the names of any of whom he describes as the “senior policy-making officials” in his articles appearing in the “Los Angeles Times”, “The Asian Wall Street Journal” and the “International Herald Tribune”.

The Union home minister, S.B.Chavan, said that he had never met Clad, Chavan said what Clad was advocating through his articles sounded familiar. This is also what an Indian political party was talking about the trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into Jammu, Kashmir and the Ladakh regions, The party had not yet perhaps realized that it was hopelessly outdated in its thinking on this matter, he added.

Asserting that India would never give up the Walleye, Chavan said he was confident that the Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, would impress upon the Pakistan prime minister, Nawaz Sharif in Jakarta, the seriousness of trying to get people to cross over the boundary into India.

The general impression after talking to Chavan and some senior policy-making officials was that while Clad was free to express his views, he would have gained more credibility had he identified his sources to substantiate his claim about a “new think” in New Delhi.

An AICC general secretary stated that Clad might be trying to re-phrase” the Shimla accord differently in a possible bid to catalyse fresh thinking on Kashmir. India need not be unduly alarmed about any such attempt as it had the capability to preserve its unity and integrity, he said.

While India wants to resolve the Kashmir issue in the framework of the Shimla agreement, Pakistan has been stoking terrorism in the Valley and funding, training and arming subversives. But while Clad has written about the so-called “new think” in New Delhi, he has not come up with anything similar or a response to it in Pakistan. A balance would have helped put things in perspective.

Article extracted from this publication >> September 18, 1992