A new Pakistani "peace plan" for Kashmir has alarmed the Indian government, writes Sudhanshu Ranjan in New Delhi Tensions were running high prior to the first meeting between India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Shaukat Aziz, in New Delhi on 23 November. Singh's statement a few days earlier, during his brief visit to Kashmir, describing the region as an "integral part of India", had infuriated Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. In response, Musharraf told Indian journalists: "If I say Kashmir is an integral part of Pakistan, how does it sound? Is India ready to move ahead? Please cut out this patronising attitude." Musharraf even threatened that Islamabad would demand implementation of the 1948 UN Resolution, calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir, if New Delhi continued to insist on defining the province as "an integral part of India". However, the very next day, on 20 November, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri tried to salvage the situation by pleading that India-Pakistan relations should remain above partisan politics. Thankfully, the New Delhi meeting was not cancelled. A month earlier on 25 October, Musharraf had unveiled a peace plan for Kashmir. He suggested that India and Pakistan consider the option of dividing the area on both sides of the Line of Control into seven regions, demilitarising them and adopting for each region a choice between independence, joint control, or being placed under UN control. In his first response to Musharraf's proposal, Singh, addressing a news conference on 17 November, said: "I have made it clear that any redrawing of borders is not acceptable and any suggestion which smacks of further division of the state is not acceptable... I have a dream and the confidence that if we all work together, we can make a new Kashmir of peace and prosperity." Analysts are questioning the motivation for Singh's recent hard-line stance. Some believe that United States Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's support of Musharraf's recent Kashmir proposal actually pushed the Indian prime minister into taking a tough stand. In Islamabad on 9 November Armitage had found the proposal "very interesting" and called Musharraf "forward thinking". The Indian government fears the proposal may drive the agenda of the second Bush administration, notwithstanding Armitage's resignation and Condoleezza Rice's appointment as secretary of state. Indian officials admit the PM's trip to Kashmir did not garner the support he had hoped for, and that rejecting Musharraf's proposal makes the Pakistani president look reasonable. India feels that Pakistan has decided to bounce back into Kashmir with a vengeance. They have already brought the All Parties Hurriyat Conference on side by making overtures to moderate Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, whom Musharraf met in Amsterdam last month. Indian security officials do not rule out an Intifada type movement in the valley. India is also cautious of the Bush administration's goodwill gestures towards Pakistan, particularly the latest arms package. This includes eight P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft, 2000 TOW-2A missiles and six Phalanx gun systems. The US defines this package as a carefully calibrated effort to bolster Pakistani capabilities to counter Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Alarmed at the military build-up, India's Foreign Secretary Shyam Sharan has conveyed India's concerns to the Bush administration. The US has so far refused to supply Pakistan with additional F-16 aircraft, though it has been providing support for older aircraft. Furthermore, with the US footing the estimated $1 billion bill, Pakistan will be able to use its own resources to shop for other military hardware elsewhere. Now it remains to be seen whether Singh and Aziz will be able to overcome long-standing obstacles in Kashmir and embark upon tangible confidence-building measures.
