Pakistan offers to drop demand for Kashmir plebiscite

[Aidoneus]

Pakistan offers to drop demand for Kashmir plebiscite
By Katherine Butler Deputy Foreign Editor
19 December 2003

The President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, has offered to drop a 50-year-old demand for a referendum on the future of Kashmir and to meet India "halfway" in the search for a peaceful settlement.

Pakistan was prepared, he said, to be "bold and flexible" to resolve the conflict which has brought nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to war twice since 1947 and to the brink of war in 2002.

Pakistan has long held the position that a United Nations-supervised plebiscite should give the people of Indian-ruled Kashmir the right to decide whether their political future lies with India or Pakistan.

UN Security Council resolutions dating from the 1940s support that position but no vote has been organised because of India's objections.

But on Wednesday General Musharraf said: "We are for United Nations Security Council resolutions. However, now we have left that aside. If we want to resolve this issue, both sides need to talk to each other with flexibility, coming beyond stated positions, meeting halfway somewhere. We are prepared to rise to the occasion, India has to be flexible also."

--snip--

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=474559

[bemildred]

1. What Kashmir needs ....

Is a plebescite that gives the people the right to decide
that Pakistan, India, and China should all fuck off.