Three, although it has chosen not to publicise it, the UPA government has conducted a substantive bilateral dialogue on resolving the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. This back channel negotiation, the first in decades, has been productive.

That dialogue is in abeyance because of political instability in Pakistan and Islamabad’s inability to sustain its side of the bargain — to maintain a violence-free atmosphere. If Pakistan can credibly demonstrate after the Mumbai attacks that it can eliminate the sources of cross-border terrorism against India, it stands to reason that the progress in the Kashmir negotiations can indeed be consolidated.

Four, despite India’s emphasis on bilateralism in its dealings with Pakistan, it is quite clear that New Delhi could well do with some international support, especially from the US, to clinch the promise of the peace process that has stalled since the Mumbai terror attacks. Using the weight of others to realise one’s own interests is very much part of intelligent statecraft.

India has no reason to deny that during the Kargil war with Pakistan in the summer of 1999, the military confrontation with Islamabad during 2001-02, and in the effort to pressure Pakistan after the Mumbai terror attacks, the US role has been a positive one.

India has everything to gain by embracing the essence of Obama’s idea — bringing stability to the region between the Indus and the Hindu Kush. That in turn would create a basis for the necessarily difficult discussion with the Obama administration on the appropriate tactics to achieve the shared strategic objectives with the US — defeating the Taliban, addressing the aspirations of the Pashtuns across the Durand Line, eliminating the sources of extremism in Pakistan, strengthening civilian control over the military in Islamabad, providing secure and legitimate borders to Pakistan, and integrating our two neighbours to the west in a framework of regional cooperation.

... contd.