Dalai Lama says Nobel Peace Prize to an Indian and a Pakistani will help resolve border conflict

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has said that the joint conferring of this year's Nobel Peace Prize on Indian Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai can help resolve the border conflict between the two neighbours.

Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head by the Taliban two years ago for advocating girls' right to education, and Indian children's right advocate Kailash Satyarthi won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday (October 10).

Expressing his feelings for both awardees, the Dalai Lama said, "I think, morally, this is very helpful. Of course, this builds a closer field. I think a genuine true sense of brotherhood sisterhood between Pakistan and Indians."

The Dalai Lama commended both Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi for working to support children and said that children's future will only be secured if it is ensured that they receive full and equal education.

The presence of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in India, who has lived in the north of the country since fleeing a failed uprising against Chinese rule of his homeland in 1959, is a major irritant for China, apart from a border dispute with India, that led to a brief war in 1962 where Indian forces suffered major reverses.

A government of exiled Tibetans and tens of thousands of refugees are also based in India.

China, which regards the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist, has ruled Tibet with an iron fist since Communist troops marched in 1950. The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

Since India and Pakistan split 67 years ago, the nations have fought each other in three wars, two over Kashmir. There has not been a full-blown war since they both tested nuclear weapons in 1998.

Exchanges of sporadic fire are common along the de facto border dividing the region, despite a ceasefire pact signed in 2003. But the extent and intensity of the latest violence and the number of civilian deaths is unusual.

India earlier warned Pakistan it would pay an "unaffordable price" if it persisted with shelling and machine-gun fire across a heavily populated border area in the lowlands of Kashmir.

Both claim all of Kashmir's Himalayan mountains and fertile valleys. Their shared border is among the most heavily militarised in the world and travel between the two nations is kept to a minimum.