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Kashmir a problem of past: US official

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (PTI) — The issues regarding Kashmir, Korea and Taiwan are problems of the past and not future and should be resolved by the parties concerned themselves, a senior US navy official has said.

“Things like the Korean Peninsula, the (Taiwan) Strait, India-Kashmir are more the legacies of past wars then they are the portents of future conflict as virtually each has at least a 50-year history of open, high-level warfare. They have to continue to be managed,” US Admiral Dennis Blair, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, said in Bangkok yesterday.

All that the international community can do is bring pressure on the two sides of a dispute to make progress over time, he said, adding, “realistically, that is the way progress will have to be made ...India and Pakistan themselves have to be the countries that have to solve it between themselves. But the role of the rest of us is to be even-handed in offering what help we can in that regard.”

Elaborating his view, he said during the Siachen Glacier conflict (apparently the Kargil conflict), which was a local conflict between India and Pakistan, the international community exerted all pressure on both sides to stop the fighting and to negotiate a truce.