Under that agreement, India agreed to negotiate purposefully on Kashmir in return for Pakistan agreeing to end cross-border terrorism. This shared understanding, which produced many impressive results in the last two years, is now being shredded by the series of terrorist acts in India, starting with the Diwali-eve bombings in New Delhi last October.

Despite the offensive nature of Kasuri’s remarks, he was only reiterating the conventional wisdom prevailing in Islamabad on the nature of the linkage between talks on Kashmir and expanding terrorist violence in India. The essence of this popular line in Islamabad is that India is responsible for the alleged slow pace of talks on J&K, and that stoking terrorist violence is one way of getting India’s attention.

Irrespective of what most of us think about the awful nature of this proposition, it must be addressed head on.

In the few rounds of talks on J&K between the two foreign secretaries, it was India that put forward most of the new proposals on cooperation across the Line of Control. Whether it was the bus services across the Line of Control, or the question of opening up cross-LoC trade in Kashmir, or meeting points for the people of J&K, it was India that put them on the table.

Even more important, India overcame its traditional reluctance to let Hurriyat leaders travel across the LoC. And India was quick to offer assistance to earthquake victims in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, which Islamabad turned down.

All that we heard from Pakistan were impressive speeches from Musharraf proposing a range of solutions to the Kashmir question. However, none of these have been formally presented in the talks between the two foreign secretaries.

... contd.