Author: Robert G. Wirsing
The Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India passed the fiftieth anniversary of its formal origins in mid-August 1997. It is one of the world's longest-running boundary conflicts, with a record of interstate violence which continues to justify maintenance of the United Nations' second oldest peacekeeping mission. Efforts by the international community to mediate the dispute stretch back nearly the entire fifty year, and the two feuding governments of India and Pakistan have themselves for the same length of time repeatedly attempted to sort out their differences through bilateral talks. The dispute's intractability, in the face of all these efforts, warrant it being clubbed among the worlds "conflicts unending".
The aim of this Briefing is firstly to explain why progress in regard to Kashmir up to this point in South Asian history has been so painfully difficult. Secondly, it hopes to evaluate the prospects under current conditions for India and Pakistan to negotiate an agreement on Kashmir that would finally place this dispute on the road to peaceful resolution. The importance of an agreement over Kashmir has been dramatically underscored by the back-to-back series of nuclear tests conducted by the two countries in May 1998.
The Briefing includes sections on: the origins of the dispute; the evolution of the Line of Control; the Aksai Chin question; the Siachen Glacier dispute; the Kashmiri uprising of 1989; diplomatic moves to negotiate a solution for Kashmir; and proposals for a settlement.
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