It has taken 55 years for a Pakistani head of state to get honest with the people of Kashmir and the world at large. | Pakistan's untenable official position "" the Kashmir dispute can be resolved only with reference to the UN resolutions "" continued even after Kofi Annan formally stated, a year or two ago, that the UN Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir had no importance at all and therefore cannot be a guideline for resolution of the Kashmir issue. |
| Pakistan's position so far was erroneous because when India referred the problem to the United Nations, on January 1, 1948, it was done under Article 35 (Chapter VI) of the UN Charter. |
| The simple point is that resolutions accepted under Chapter VI do not oblige the council to take any action. To date, the Security Council has accepted 1,100 resolutions, out of which only two are important, both passed under Chapter 7, while Kashmir and the rest of the 1,100 were passed under Chapter 6. |
| The two Security Council resolutions that were passed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, resulted in the UN's intervention in the liberation of East Timor from Indonesia and in another dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy, settled in favour of Italy through a referendum. |
| Till now, the UN resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, seeking a plebiscite, have been the bedrock of Pakistan's claims and the single most important reference point for most militant groups in the Kashmir valley. |
| With President Pervez Musharraf finally acknowledging in public what it knew in private all along, there is the possibility of a change in the framework for resolving the problem, even though the Pakistani prime minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, has backtracked from his president's position. |
| It can be argued with good reason that the real thing is not the resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir per se but the international agreement which formed the basis of these resolutions. |
| Not all Security Council resolutions were passed with the consent of the contending parties. The resolutions on Kashmir were passed with the consent of India and Pakistan and thus they are in the nature of an international agreement. |
| But then it is equally valid to argue that these have been superseded by other bilateral agreements, the most notable ones being the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration. This means that the issue now is firmly a bilateral one. |
| Pro-independence militant groups are likely to interpret Mr Musharraf's position as a major gain for them since the UN resolutions did not provide for a third option "" independence. |
| The UN resolution, it may be recalled, referred only to accession to India or Pakistan, based on a plebiscite. With the Pakistani president changing his old official position, it is open to the interpretation that Pakistan is now not averse to the third option. |
| Indeed, this could well be his gameplan. Faced with a marginalisation of support for Pakistan in the Valley, Gen. Musharraf could be trying to play for what he can get. |
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