The Kashmir dispute

There's arguably a Nobel Peace Prize waiting to be bestowed on the subcontinent if only someone would pluck up the courage to act decisively instead of engaging in inane diplomatic chatter over Kashmir. The valley is now bloody enough to qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize. The recent addition of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of New Delhi and Islamabad has made the conflict potentially even more horrific.

But as the award of this year's Nobel Peace Prize to David Trimble and John Hume showed, the sine qua non for negotiated peace is sensible heads on both sides. They fashioned peace negotiations which rest on the central idea that each side must give up on some "non-negotiable" long-standing demands, in the face of hostile reactions from their respective communities -- and this is crucial -- with the full backing of London and Dublin.

For Kashmir, it is New Delhi's intransigence and Islamabad's monomania that are the stumbling blocks. These attitudes preclude any possibility of an Indo-Pakistani version of Trimble and Hume emerging from the subcontinent's political class.

-- The Statesman, New Delhi