The Hindu : 'Support Indo-Pak. peace initiative'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 20, 2003

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'Support Indo-Pak. peace initiative'

By R. Gopalakrishnan

RAIPUR July 19. Peace activists and groups in both India and Pakistan have to accept the "responsibility" of strengthening the recent initiatives for building people-to-people contacts between the two countries ahead of the SAARC summit scheduled for the first week of January 2004, Admiral L. Ramdas (retd), peace activist, declared here today.

"We have to support the initiatives of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, irrespective of any ideological differences, to ensure that the initiative does not lapse again" (as had happened with earlier official attempts to build new bridges between the two countries), he said, delivering a lecture under the auspices of the Mayaram Surjan Foundation, Raipur, the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) and the Chhattisgarh Anumukti Manch here.

Admiral Ramdas, a member of the national coordination committee of the CNDP and emeritus-president of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy said there were "vested interests" in both the countries — more so in Pakistan in view of the prominent place of the armed forces in its polity — that would be happy to stall progress in bilateral relations, which had made a new beginning in the recent exchange of parliamentary delegations and business missions and resumption of bus services.

Declaring that the "military option is ruled out" for solving bilateral disputes in view of the nuclearisation of the two countries, he recalled Mr. Vajpayee's declaration in favour of "the path of reconciliation and a composite dialogue" (including and not restricted to, Jammu and Kashmir). While quick solutions could not be expected on the Kashmir question, where the rulers in both India and Pakistan had to address "domestic constraints", it was possible that the initial position of the interlocutors would be with reference to stabilising the Line of Control. A solution that would be acceptable to India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir would be possible only in the long run, but for this to happen, progress on questions like easing restrictions on the issue of visas and keeping the border between the Indian and Pakistani portions of Kashmir "porous" and facilitating visits across that boundary should be earnestly attempted.

Girijesh Pant, Vice-Chancellor, Bilaspur University, said that though the renewed bilateral peace process was due partly to "international pressure exerted on them in a unipolar world'', the "peace constituencies" in both the countries should take advantage of it to strengthen the process.

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