Dawn of Pakistan reports that Islamabad has scuppered a parliamentary resolution calling on the Obama administration to include Kashmir in the mandate of special US envoy Richard Holbrooke.
“The Foreign Office and a federal minister have scuttled a move for adoption of a resolution in the National Assembly asking US President Barack Obama to appoint an envoy on Kashmir or include the settlement of the dispute in the mandate of the US envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the paper reported Sunday.
“A top official of the Foreign Office blocked the move by setting aside a joint resolution approved by members from both the sides of the aisle, and came out with another version, excluding the call for sending a US envoy on Kashmir,” it added.
Instead the government has proposed a diluted version of the resolution which says, “This house underscores the importance of peaceful and just resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. We expect the international community to play its due role in the early resolution of this longstanding dispute. And in this context expresses confidence that the new US administration will, as stated by President Obama, give priority to this issue.”
The development has significant implications for India-Pakistan relations. It is not immediately clear what prompted the government to tone down the resolution but it is not altogether unlikely that New Delhi’s unhappiness over including Kashmir in Holbrooke’s mandate could have played a role. Going by the traditional Pakistani approach, it would have liked Kashmir come under a sharper international scrutiny that was bound to have happened had President Obama incorporated the dispute in his envoy’s agenda. It is hard to read Pakistan’s motivations in not pushing for Kashmir’s inclusion to the extent one would have expected.
One way to look at it is that Pakistan is conscious about the long-term effects of such an inclusion on bilateral ties. The aftermath of the November 26 terror attacks on Mumbai and Pakistan’s reluctance to cooperate have considerably slowed down the momentum towards normalizing relations with India. Pushing Kashmir onto Holbrooke’s plan would have soured relations even more.
It is tempting to read a change of heart here but then one has been let down in the past.