Kashmir vital for peace
2010-01-05 20:06
Muzaffarabad - The settlement of a dispute between Pakistan and India over Kashmir is vital for regional peace, Pakistan's president said on Tuesday as his government faces growing pressure to combat militancy.
India suspended a five-year-old peace process with its old rival Pakistan after an assault on the Indian city of Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants in November 2008.
India has sought help from the United States to put pressure on Pakistan to dismantle what it calls the infrastructure of the militants who carried out the Mumbai attack in which 166 people were killed.
The United States also wants Pakistan to eradicate Taliban militants fighting in Afghanistan from safe havens in Pakistani border regions.
President Asif Ali Zardari said regional peace was inextricably linked to the settlement of the decades-old dispute over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir which both Pakistan and India claim in full but rule in part.
"As world attention is on Pakistan, then together with Pakistan, the world has to talk about the Kashmir problem as well because only then can peace be brought to the region," Zardari said in a address to Pakistani Kashmir's legislature.
"We cannot delink regional peace from peace in Kashmir... we have highlighted this thinking in the world and will keep projecting it."
Reduce tension
The United States wants the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals to reduce tension and resume their stalled dialogue on a range of issues from trade to Kashmir so Pakistan can focus on the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda on its Afghan border.
Pakistani and Indian leaders and senior officials have met several times on the sidelines of international gatherings but India insists Pakistan must take forceful action against militants before talks are resumed.
Pakistan has acknowledged that the Mumbai assault was plotted and partly launched from its soil and is prosecuting seven suspects in a closed-door hearing.
Zardari said Pakistan and India, which have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947, should learn to live in peace.
"We know that we cannot change our neighbours but they should also know that they can also not change their neighbours."
India, which rejects outside involvement in the Kashmir dispute, accuses Pakistan of arming and sending Islamist militants across the border to fight Indian rule in Kashmir.
Pakistan denies that, saying it only extends political, moral and diplomatic support to what it calls Kashmir's freedom movement.
While India and Afghanistan accuse Pakistan of backing rebels fighting the Indian and Afghan governments, Pakistan says India and Afghanistan are helping separatist rebels in Pakistan's gas-rich Baluchistan province.
