India has warned US President Barack Obama that he risks “barking up the wrong tree” if he seeks to broker a settlement between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir. MK Narayanan, India’s national security advisor, said that the new US administration was in danger of dredging up out of date Clinton administration-era strategies in a bid to bring about improved ties between the two nuclear armed neighbours.
“I do think that we could make President Obama understand, if he does nurse any such view, that he is barking up the wrong tree. I think Kashmir today has become one of the quieter and safer places in this part of the world,” Mr Narayanan said in an interview with CNBC TV18.
“It’s possible that at this time there are elements, perhaps in the administration who are harking back to the pre-2000 era.”
The warning comes as Richard Holbrooke, Mr Obama’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, prepares to come to the region for the first time in his new capacity. Mr Narayanan is close to Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, and Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling Congress Party.
Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan have fought two wars and where both countries mass troops, is a highly sensitive issue for New Delhi.
Last month, David Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, angered the Indian government by saying that the unresolved dispute over Kashmir was a cause of terrorism in the region. Its vilification of Mr Miliband was interpreted as a tacit signal to Washington to keep out.
Kashmir, which has a Muslim majority, was claimed by both India and Pakistan following partition in 1947 at the end of British rule. Since 1989 New Delhi has been battling a separatist insurgency in a struggle estimated to have cost up to 70,000 lives.
Earlier this year large anti-India protests drew up to 500,000 people onto the streets and led to the imposition of a long curfew. But New Delhi was encouraged by a largely peaceful state election late last year that recorded a better than expected voter turnout.
“References made by president Obama, which seem to suggest that there is some kind of link with settlement on Pakistan’s western border and the Kashmir issue certainly have caused concern,” said Mr Narayanan. But he said the new US administration and India had yet to have direct contact over the issue.
C. Raja Mohan, professor of international relations at Singapore’s Nanyang University, said New Delhi’s treatment of Mr Miliband had helped persuade Washington to abandon any overt linkage of the Kashmir dispute with combating extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Washington’s decision to drop India from formal inclusion in Mr Holbrooks’ special envoy mandate reflected these sensitivities.
“You kill a chicken to scare a monkey,” Mr Mohan said at a recent seminar in New Delhi on US relations with South Asia. “We killed the chicken and the monkey got the message.”
Mr Mohan said India and Pakistan had agreed a basic outline of a peace deal on Kashmir during the tenure of Pakistani leader Pervez Musharaf, but that the process had faltered as Mr Musharaf had weakenend and finally lost power.
