Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
been limited and constrained. For years the Soviets provided India with an
automatic veto in the United Nations on Kashmir-related resolutions, and
otherwise backed New Delhi diplomatically.
The Pakistanis became more dependent on the United States for political and
military support, but could never get the United States to commit itself to firm
security assurances against India, precisely because Washington was afraid of
being sucked into a Kashmir conflict. Both Washington and Moscow made
several inconclusive efforts to mediate the dispute or bring about its peaceful
resolution, but were wary of anything more. It took the 1990 crisis with its
nuclear dimension to bring the United States back to the region, and then only
briefly.
After India defeated Pakistan in 1971, India kept outsiders at a distance as it
sought to reach a bilateral understanding with Pakistan. Mrs Gandhi and Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto met in the Indian hill station of Simla in late June and early July
1972.
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There, after a long and complicated negotiation, they committed their
countries to a bilateral settlement of all outstanding disputes. Presumably, this
included Kashmir (which was mentioned only in the last paragraph of the text).
The Simla Agreement did not rule out mediation or multilateral diplomacy, if
both sides agreed.
Divergent interpretations of Simla added another layer of India-Pakistan
distrust. While there is a formal text, there may have been verbal agreements
between the two leaders that have never been made public. According to most
Indian accounts, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto told Mrs. Gandhi that he was willing to
settle the Kashmir dispute along the Line of Control, but a final agreement had to
be delayed because he was still weak politically. Pakistani accounts claim that
Bhutto did no such thing, and that in any case the written agreement is what
matters. For India, Simla had supplanted the UN resolutions as a point of
reference for resolving the Kashmir dispute. After all, Indian leaders reasoned,
the two parties had pledged to work directly with one another, implicitly
abandoning extra-regional diplomacy. For Pakistan, Simla supplemented but did
not replace the operative UN resolutions on Kashmir.
After the Simla Agreement, the Kashmir dispute seemed to subside. The
Indian government began to view the LOC as a more or less permanent border,
but both sides continued to nibble away at it when an opportunity arose—most
spectacularly in the case of India's move to occupy much of the Siachen
Glacier.
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For Pakistani diplomats the Simla Agreement neither replaced the UN
resolutions nor did the conversion of the cease-fire line into a LOC produce a
permanent
international
border. Guided by these varied interpretations both
sides continued to press their respective claims whenever the opportunity arose,
but for 17 years Kashmir was widely regarded outside the region as either solved
or on the way to resolution. Other regional issues displaced Kashmir: the 1974
Indian nuclear test, Pakistan's covert nuclear weapons program, and the Soviet
