ISLAMABAD : There is no change in the US policy in terms of the Kashmir issue, Secretary of State John Kerry told Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif even as the two nations agreed to resume “strategic dialogue”.
“Kerry came to say ‘no’ to intervention on Kashmir,” read a headline in a leading English daily here on the just concluded first visit of Mr John Kerry as the American secretary of state to Pakistan. His earlier visits as Senator saw him play the role of “a trouble shooter”.
“The US Secretary of State Senator John Kerry came prepared to tell the Nawaz Sharif government that there is no change in policy in terms of the Kashmir issue and admitted that the US has tried this time around to have much more sober expectations, be more realistic, talk about the issues of most strategic interest to both sides, while moving away from giving Pakistan the traditional financial assistance that it granted in the past,” Mariana Baabar, diplomatic correspondent of The News International reported in a front page dispatch today.
Senior US officials accompanying Mr Kerry just before he touched down in Islamabad told the media corps accompanying the Secretary that the Obama administration is not seeking to broker talks between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, the dispatch added.
“There’s no change in policy in terms of where we are on that (Kashmir), which is that we do not see ourselves or seek to be in the middle of any conversation between India and Pakistan on Kashmir. But certainly we are very supportive of the moves that both India and Pakistan have made to normalise relations,” the report quoted a senior State Department official as saying.
“And I think that the great strides in normalisation on the economic side have been very important the last few years and have really paved the way for better and more constructive conversations on the political side. So, we’ll see where that continues to lead,” the official remarked in response to a query.
He added that when Mr Kerry was in India, he called on the Indians to continue that process of facilitation, as well as the Pakistanis to do things like providing the MFN status to Indians.
“And I’m sure that that will be part of the conversations that we continue to have. But we are external actors in this. We are not-we are in no way seeking to broker any sort of conversation on Kashmir,” added the top American official, according to Mariana Baabar’s dispatch.
He was not identified by name or designation since his was a background briefing and by convention the source of such briefing is not identified in media reports.
Mr Kerry is a familiar face to Pakistan. He made several visits to the country in the past in his capacity as an American senator. All such visits were as a trouble shooter, but the visit this time to Pakistan took place when “it is not a moment of crisis which had been the state of bilateral relations over the last years,” his aides remarked.
(AGENCIES)
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