Pakistan, India back to square one on Kashmir: Daily

Pakistan and India are "back at a place from where they have to build from scratch" on Kashmir, said a leading daily Sunday.

An editorial in the Dawn said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who addressed the UN General Assembly Friday, was "different to the one who had earned much flak from the hawks in Pakistan for his India vision of a few years ago".

"Pakistan and India are back at a place from where they have to build from scratch," the daily said.

It added that if internal Pakistani dynamics, "such as Sharif's tenuous ties with the security establishment, have contributed to the responses today, India's desire, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to act as an 'emerging superpower' has also deterred dialogue between the two countries".

The daily went on to say that last month's cancellation of the foreign secretary-level talks by New Delhi had heralded the suspension.

"In fact, the ground was being prepared for that eventuality and recent engagement between the two countries, when not cold, has been too heated.

"There were far too many incidents of firing on the Pakistan-India frontier if we are to cite just one significant reason for the deterioration in ties - and the gifts the two prime ministers exchanged were too bereft of substance to be of any long-term value," it said.

The editorial noted that the basic reason for this engagement in recent times was that "in a changed world, Pakistan and India could not continue their hostile ways if they hoped to keep pace with economic development".

"...the increasing insistence by Modi's India to dictate is rooted in the belief that India today is economically powerful enough for international players to side with it - tacitly and openly.

"That would mean greater pressure on Pakistan which has an image problem and a host of economic problems to deal with. But this formula disregards the fact that Islamabad cannot ignore or compromise on Kashmir..."