M A I N   N E W S

USA rejects Pak offer on Kashmir

New Delhi, June 28
The USA today rejected Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s call to the USA to mediate on the Kashmir issue as part of his roadmap for the normalisation of Indo-Pak ties, asserting there will be no third party at the negotiating table.

“The decision makers are India and Pakistan, so there will not be a third chair at the table,” outgoing US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill told a television channel.

Mr Musharraf’s suggestion for a West Asia-type peace roadmap on Kashmir involving the USA during his visit to Washington has already been rejected by India.

The Pakistan President has also outlined a four-stage approach to resolve the issue, saying any search for an immediate solution to the problem would be rejected by extremists in both India and Pakistan.

Mr Blackwill said: “There is no middle path, we are not going to mediate. What we will do is just facilitate the two countries and that is substance, it is not a roadmap, it is not a gameplan and it is not a blue-print”, the Sahara television quoted him as saying in a release.

Sharing India’s concerns, the American envoy said: “Relations (between India and Pakistan) cannot be normal in the long-term until terrorism emanating from Pakistan ends but in the short term, talking is better than not talking at all.

Mr Blackwill said the USA was working on ending terrorism against India virtually every day. “We are not going to leave this problem and we will continue to work on it and eventually defeat it while working with India and other countries”.

On why the USA wanted Indian peace-keeping forces in Iraq, he said India had a very professional army and it was one of the most experienced armies in peace-keeping.

Even if the Indian forces were not sent to Iraq, it would have no adverse fallout on Indo-US relations, he said.

ISLAMABAD: Expressing readiness to hold bilateral or multilateral talks with India, Pakistan on Saturday said though no “roadmap” existed for resumption of composite talks with New Delhi, dialogue could begin on the basis of the path crafted at Foreign Secretary-level meetings between the two countries on earlier occasions.

Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said that though there was no external “roadmap” for the resumption of a composite dialogue, the path to such a dialogue had already been crafted with great skill by the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries on at least 10 occasions at their meetings in 1994, 1996, 1997 and at Agra.

Reacting to India’s External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha’s statement that India did not welcome any third-party mediation or facilitation but was prepared to discuss the issue with Pakistan on a bilateral basis, Mr Kasuri told reporters that Pakistan was ready for both. — PTI