Kashmir Issue and Mediation.

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Kashmir Issue and Mediation:

By

Muhammad Afzal Ch.

Student of Diplomacy and strategic studies

University of Punjab Lahore

Pakistan.

Introduction:

The record of the international mediation (Third Party role), or meditative interventions in regard to the Kashmir dispute is clearly mixed: These interventions achieved both some successes and some failures. Among the successes were the cease-fire and truce agreements, arranged by UNCIP in 1948 and 1949.The cease-fire agreement did not hold for long, and peacekeeping operation that emerged from it failed in large measure to keep the peace. But that failure can hardly be charged exclusively against the United Nations. Among the UN’s failures were the several attempts to mediate the Kashmir dispute by UN representatives between 1950 and 1958.

Since the latter date, in no case has mediation been applied specially and explicitly to the Kashmir dispute. British mediation of the 1965 Rann of Kutch crisis between Pakistan and India brought about a cease-fire agreement on 30 June 1965.However, that agreement, which was followed in February 1968 by the successful international arbitration of the Sind-Kutch boundary, applied only to a dispute stretch of the International border between India and Pakistan. In January 1966, the Soviet Union successfully mediated an indo-Pakistan agreement (The Tashkent Declaration) on cease-fire and restoration of peaceful relations, thus providing a formal ending to the 1965 war. This agreement provided for little more, however than restoration of the territorial status quo ante. It stated that Kashmir dispute has been discussed and that each side had set forth its respective position in regard to this dispute, but there were no provisions for its amelioration.

From the beginning of the Kashmir conflict, international involvement has been looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion by both Pakistan and India. Both sides have been acutely conscious of the dangers inherent in mediation exercises, among them mediator’s own (and not necessarily compatible) political agenda; and both sides have also been painfully aware that even successful mediation, if it exposed them to charges of a sellout, could lead to domestic political disaster. Neither side’s direct experience so far of mediation would in any way have altered those perceptions. Pakistan, in particular, had very little to show for their reliance on world sympathies save for a rather diluted and ambiguous international commitment to the “self-determination” of Kashmir. Nevertheless, it has long been clear that Pakistan government, the holder of the weaker hand in the Kashmir conflict, has been far more willing than its India to gamble on international involvement.

In his last visit of America Khurshid M Kasuri, the Pakistani foreign minister, said in Washington Pakistan welcomes mediation, pressure, facilitation, encouragement or any such other role of the United States and the rest of the international community in resolving the Kashmir issue.

Pakistan have clung tenaciously, of course, to the Security Council Resolution that initially defined the UN’s responsibilities in regard to Kashmir and in particular have given unequivocal support to prospective UN supervision of a plebiscite in Kashmir.

In recent years, Pakistan ‘s “internationalism” has been growing even more conspicuous .Its policymakers were showing very little hesitation, in fact, in appealing for mediation and for other form of international interventions to protect the human rights of Kashmiries, to hold the plebiscite in the valley and to give the right of “self-determination” to people of Kashmir. Transparent in these appeals was the belief, frequently voiced in Pakistan, that India had never before been quite so vulnerable to her.

On Saturday, Feb 16, 2002 President of Pakistan Pervaiz Mussaraf said that 'Mediation is the only choice’ and also admits US Playing `Role’ in Current Indo-Pak Thaw

Third party mediation is what is being referred to increasingly in this connection and the state that is being cited, as the third party mediator is of course the United States of America. Yet this is a non-starter. India will not concede to direct US intervention on Kashmir since it sees itself as a contending great power. Even from the Pakistani perspective, the US is not a suitable third party mediator because it has its own strategic interests in this region and India is becoming critical to these interests.

On the contrary, Indian government seemed as fully opposed the mediation and direct   involvement of the international community or US or any other Third-party Peace Mediation on Kashmir dispute as degrading India’ independence while as the same time jeopardizing its integrity.Any plan for international intervention that envisioned a major expansion in UN activity in Kashmir was thus caught between two strongly opposed points of view. When asked whether she would support an enlarged role for the United Nations in Kashmir, for instance, Pakistan was almost invariably enthusiastic, “certainly” responded Pakistani diplomat in summer 1993.Asked the same question to the Indian foreign Sectary Jyotinder Nath Dixit,”We will not like UN intervention” . Indeed he stated flattely, the Indian government had firmly opposed to it. Recalling that it was the Indian government itself that had appealed for security Council intervention In January 1948.Dixit said that had New Delhi delayed its appeal at that time for just for one more week, the Pakistani forces would have been pushed out of Kashmir by the Indian army, sparing India years of grief. India had made a serious mistake then, he observed (ecoching the sentiments of innumerable other Indians), and it would not make such a mistake again. For Pakistani, in contrast, the UN’s presence in Kashmir was physical testimony to the basic legality of their territorial claim-to the very existence of the dispute.

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UNO and Kashmir:

United Nations made to reconcile the conflict between India and Pakistan, its successes and failures, the causes behind the failures, and the prospects for the future. I will attempt to show that the UN failed to bring about a lasting solution to the problem because the UN has very limited abilities when the parties to a conflict have very differing views and are unwilling to compromise on their positions. Even diplomatic efforts under Chapter VI of the UN Charter by major powers interested in the conflict’s resolutions are insufficient in cases where the powers are unable and/or unwilling ...

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