NEW DELHI: The US desire to contain China is being perceived by Indian officials as a possible reason for its bid to exploit the Kashmir dispute to further its own national interests. It is being said in influential circles here that the US is not as much interested in India, Pakistan or Kashmir directly as it is in using the region of Kashmir directly under Pakistan’s control to gain access to Tibet and with China on human rights violations there.

A second US objective is to compel India and Pakistan to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT). The Kashmir dispute comes handy to the US in trying to achieve this.

The ‘China factor’ is important as the U.S. never reconciled itself to Pakistan ceding certain areas in the northern territory of the J&K state to China in 1962. This made possible the Karakoram highway and gave a motorable road to China leading to Karachi and the waters of the Arabian Sea.

As it happened, India’s then foreign minister Singh was leading a delegation for the first of five rounds of talks with Pakistan. Some of the senior members of the delegation, including G Parthasarthy, India’s high commissioner to Pakistan, were in favor of calling off the talks in protest against Pakistan’s act of ceding territory to China which did not belong to Pakistan.

However, Swaran Singh, after gathering a second opinion from other delegates and also those who were not part of the delegation, like Pran Chopra, felt it more prudent to continue with the talks as walking out in protest would be portrayed as India having wriggled out of a situation.

During the Indo pak talks then, India lodged a protest against Pakistan it’s ceding of this territory to China. When China conveyed its displeasure over the Indian stand, it was stated that there was a provision in the agreement under which what was subsequently to be done with the ceded territory, depended on the settlement reached. The view of a leading American journalist, Tom Brady, then was that it was a clever move by China to get Pakistan to cede a territory that gave it access to the Arabian Sea and the Gulf region. As things stand, that territory is still with China and it rankles not only India but the US also.

It is possible that in this backdrop, the US could be floating the idea of “unified independent Kashmir” through various Kashmiri groups considering that an independent Kashmir might be more amenable to US influence than to that of India or Pakistan In this context, when Robin Raphael spoke of Kashmir being a disputed territory, the US interest in its Pakistan administered part cannot be overlooked by Indian policy makers. It is that part of Kashmir, more than the part with India, which gives direct access to Tibet and China and serves US interests better.

Article extracted from this publication >>  November 19, 1993