Downsizing a summit?

The wild fluctuations of the diplomatic mood in both India and Pakistan about the prospects of a constructive meeting between their leaders in New York later this month seem to suggest a disturbing trend on the bilateral front.

Neither the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, nor Pakistan's President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has resiled from their willingness to hold talks for the second time in two months.

Now, there is really nothing new in Islamabad's emphatic insistence that a mutually acceptable resolution of the Kashmir dispute is central to the normalization of the India-Pakistan relationship... .

Both countries should, therefore, recognize the dangers of allowing their respective hawks on the domestic scene to outline the direction of what must be an inter-state dialogue that calls for uncommon statesmanship.

The Kashmir dispute, as also Pakistan-inspired terrorism inside India, besides their concerns about each other's nuclear and conventional military postures, can brook no other approach.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi