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| | GEO Pakistan | | Manmohan says ready to settle Kashmir dispute | Updated at: 0553 PST, Tuesday, November 24, 2009
 WASHINGTON: India has enduring civilizational links with Afghanistan. India will continue to assist Afghanistan in building its institutions and its human resources.
With these two sentences, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday threw down the gauntlet to Washington, Islamabad and perhaps even Beijing and other world capitals that India would not be budged from pursuing its interests in Afghanistan -- primarily of preventing the country from turning toxic under Pakistan’s malignant influence and American uncertainty.
He said we are ready to settle all disputes with Pakistan including Jammu and Kashmir row.
“The road to peace on Afghanistan will be long and hard. But given the high stakes involved, the commitment of the international community must be sustained by firm resolve and unity of purpose."
Singh told Washington’s top policy wonks gathered to hear him at the Center for Foreign Relations, amid a continuing review by President Obama about U.S options in Afghanistan.
The remarks were clearly meant for the US President and his principals who have been bashing heads for several weeks now over next steps in Afghanistan amid charges of dithering on the crucial issue. Singh’s advice ahead of his meeting with Obama on Tuesday -- Stay the course; we are going to be there.
Singh offered similar advice in an earlier address to US and Indian business leaders that the international community needs to remain engaged in Afghanistan and any “premature talk of exit will only embolden the terrorists.”
On the eve of the first anniversary of the Mumbai carnage, Singh also told the elite gathering, many of them regional experts keen to see India talking to Pakistan, that "for that to happen Pakistan must make a break with the past, abjure terrorism and come to the table with good faith and sincerity."
He said his government had invested heavily in normalizing relations with Pakistan and "we are ready to pick up the threads of the dialogue including on issues relating Jammu and Kashmir.”
“We should not harbour any illusions that a selective approach to terrorism , tackling it on one place while ignoring it in others, will work," Singh added.
Clearly, the Prime Minister too has taken a tough stand in the past few days on Pakistan even as Islamabad as reverted to its maximalist position on Kashmir, falling back on the long-lapsed UN Security Council resolution on the subject. The Prime Minister’s conditional offer of talks followed remarks in a television interview over the weekend in which he despaired about who to talk to in shifty Islamabad, where the civilian dispensation seemed to be overwhelmed by the country’s military.
Even on the nuclear issue, a confident Singh indicated India would not be overawed or intimidated by the Obama administration's non-proliferation initiatives, welcoming talks on fissile material cut off treaty and while steering clear of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Much of what he said before the policy gathering seemed preparatory to his meeting with the US President tomorrow, their first bilateral encounter.
Singh showed the mildest sign of movement in New Delhi's stand in the climate change talks saying India will not compromise the right of developing countries to develop and lift their populations out of property, but "we will do more if there is global support in terms of financial resources and technology transfer.” |  |
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