Clinton Hopes Indo-Pak Dialogue Will Address Kashmir Problem

US President Bill Clinton, who met Prime Minister IK Gujral and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif last week, is hopeful that the India-Pakistan dialogue will address the Kashmir issue.

Clintons spokesman Michael McCurry said here on Tuesday that the President, who met the two South Asian leaders while in New York to address the UN General Assembly, was greatly encouraged by his meetings with both leaders.

He sees within South Asia the opportunity for reconciliation through a dialogue that will allow both governments to address the disagreements they have, particularly on the disputed territory of Kashmir, McCurry said.

He said, There have been some hopeful things suggested by both governments in the aftermath of that meeting. Consequently, he said, the United States government, at the urging of the President, will closely follow and attempt to encourage both governments to continue a dialogue that might help them address some of the fundamental questions that have caused tension between the two governments for so many years.

In his meeting with Gujral on September 22, Clinton assured the Prime Minister that Washington had absolutely no intention of interfering in the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.

Clinton had told Gujral, We are very careful not to interfere in any way with the issues you have with Pakistan. But he offered Washingtons unstinted support for the New Delhi-Islamabad dialogue that could ultimately lead to a resolution of the dispute, saying the US very much supports the dialogue that is under way.

Sharif had in his meeting with the President forcefully brought up the Kashmir issue, but Clinton, without mentioning the word Kashmir, simply expressed the hope that India and Pakistan could move the dialogue forward in the next round of foreign secretaries talks.Sharif had also complained to Clinton that India was backtracking from its commitment to establish a working group on Kashmir.

Clinton and other senior US officials have consistently maintained that Washington has seen no mediating role for itself in the Kashmir dispute, unless invited by both countries. The administration has noted that the envisaged working group on Kashmir is a hopeful sign. The administration sees this as a step-up from the prevailing status quo and at several briefings, senior administration officials have said that such a working group could be a first step towards a modus vivendi on the Kashmir issue which hawks in the Pentagon and the CIA still believe could spark a nuclear confrontation between the two countries.

McCurry acknowledged that the agenda for Clintons proposed visit to India and Pakistan in February was being worked on and that the President himself, following his meetings with Gujral and Sharif, seemed to have a better assessment of the situation in the region.

He had a much better sense as a result of those meetings of the types of issues that would define the agenda when he does go, McCurry said.

McCurry said that President Clinton, from the meetings with the two Prime Ministers, got a sense of the kinds of things that we could do in the intervening months to address the opportunities for bilateral dialogue that exists between the governments of Pakistan and India.