NEW DELHI: India last week rejected unofficial US moves to mediate in Jammu and Kashmir with active participation by former President Jimmy Carter and said it was determined to continue with its efforts to hold elections and restore normalcy in the troubled state.

“It is not our policy to accept mediation. We stand by our offer of bilateral discussions under the Shimla Agreement,” minister of state for external affairs Salman Khurshid told TOINS.

The bilateral talks, he said, would depend upon “conditions in India and conditions in Pakistan. “We are prepared to alter our conditions, but they are not ready to alter theirs,” he said.

“He was reacting to reports that an American think tank, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), believed to enjoy blessings of the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, is sponsoring a meeting in Washington to evolve a consensus among Kashmiri leaders on both sides.

Although invitations are yet to be delivered, reports published in “The Nation” of Pakistan and “The Khaleej Times” said three representatives from “Azad” Kashmir, including President Sikandar Hayat Khan and prime minister Qayyum Khan, three from the All Party Hurriyat Conference, including its chief, Omar Farooq, former Maharaja and Sadar-e-Riyasat Karan Singh and a representative each of the Pandit and Buddhist communities are expected to attend the conference.

Significantly, the reports say that the US effort is to “evolve a consensus, by completely bypassing both India and Pakistan” and the two neighbors would be confronted with “a fair accompli” on this matter.

This is not the first non-official attempt by the US to mediate on the Kashmir issue. Two years ago, even a “blue-print” of a solution that would, among other things, require acceptance of the Line of Control (LOC) as the international border had been drawn up by US experts reportedly at the instance of the Clinton Administration, However, India has consistently rejected all such moves.

Commenting on the initiative by former US President Jimmy Carter, fellow Democrat and unofficial trouble-shooter of President Clinton, who has achieved positive results in North Korea and Haiti, Khurshid said: The problem in Kashmir is very different from the ones he (Mr. Carter) has dealt with elsewhere. If it could be resolved by world statesmen, we would have welcomed it.”

Above all, Mr. Khurshid said, what mattered was the “principle of not compromising on our border, and that India and its stand on Kashmir are not based on religion.”

There is a school of thought here which feels that the Clinton Administration, having “humored” the Benazir Bhutto regime in Islamabad with the Brown Amendment and a token supply of arms in the face of Indian protests, may be willing to help out both sides and break the dead-lock over the Kashmir issue. But, there are also others who see in the US effort a bid to play a domineering role in South Asia.

The “Khaleej Times” report had the US Ambassador in India, Frank Wisner, had been visiting Pakistan and playing a “key’ Tole” to expedite efforts, meeting both government and opposition leaders “if Kashmiris taken care of, it would make it much easier for Washington to crack down on the nuclear programs of Pakistan and India.”

“Americans, who are in direct touch with all prominent Kashmiri leaders, has been trying to convince them that once a consensus formula is evolved, Washington would use its influence over both New Delhi and Islamabad to make them accept it as a fate accompli,” the report said.

Article extracted from this publication >> October 20, 1995