Posted on: Monday, May 12, 2003

EDITORIAL
No real reconciliation with Kashmir unsolved

Usually around this time of year, global security pundits anticipate the seasonal saber-rattling between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan.

South Asia's most volatile neighbors have been locked in territorial disputes since their independence from Britain in 1947. In the summer of 1998, both sides wildly upped the ante by detonating atomic bombs, and have been flaunting their nuclear capabilities ever since.

Indo-Pak relations have recently been thawing. Or so it appears. Both countries have made overtures to restore diplomatic, travel and trade links to the point they were before a 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament.

Pakistan has even proposed that both countries destroy their nuclear arsenals, and make South Asia a nuclear-free zone. India says it can't disarm because it has to defend itself from other threats, mainly China.

While we applaud any sign of reconciliation between these nuclear enemies, real progress demands that India and Pakistan take meaningful steps to resolve their decades-old feud over India's only Muslim-majority state of Kashmir.

It's not a groundless dispute. And as long as this deadlock continues, peace overtures — though wholly welcome — will ring a tad hollow.