I think your writting has much to recomend it but I feel that there is very practical situation to be resolved. Kasmir has a significant part of the head waters of the Indus River. I feel that any settlement in Kasmir must include water security for Pakistan, a largely arid country.

Thank you Syed for your reasoned essay: however, I do not think this is a bilateral issue.
There are a host of third parties that have an interest in keeping India and Pakistan at each other’s throats. I can not see any resolution of the Kashmir issue until there is a genuine multilateral approach with the three major outside players - USA, China and Iran – all taking a dispassionate part. And there is the nub. Can you imagine any of these current administrations acceding to the interests of any one of the other two? All three countries are directly implicated in the tragedy of the last 60 years by either indirect meddling or directly siding with one of India or Pakistan.
The current US support for Pakistan is well known, as is the now warm relations between India and the US. But it is little appreciated that the US played a pivotal role in the partition of India that led to this imbroglio.
China's role in this is well and truely understated. You did not even mention that China itself has a claim on Kashmir that is justifed on a 1500 year old occupation of Kashmir. Recent meetings between China's Wen Jiabao and India's Manmohan Singh failed to resolute the dispute that led to the 1962 war between these two countries (which then led to the opportunistical agreement between China and Pakistan over Kashmir). This is a tangled web, and we haven't even considered the Iranian influence.
Charles

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) covert action program is relevant to all this.

Syed largely talks about Western expectations of Indo-Pakistani relations at the Public level. Much goes on below the surface.

The Pakistani military, due to its inferiority in conventional arms, has been largely forced away from open fighting in Kashmir. Furthermore the advent of nuclear weapons in the Indo/Pakistani arsenals makes open warfare increasingly high risk.

This is where Pakistan's major intelligence agency come in - through sponsoring asymetric/jihadist/guerilla warfare. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Services_Intelligence has long considered itself aloof from what it sees as a disturbingly democratic Pakistani Government. Partially using Saudi money ISI has supported a system of "Madrasahs" (Islamic Schools) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasah#Criticism whose scholars may graduate to paramilitary jihadist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

One network of such camps, associated with ISI and mainly funded by the Saudis, was led by Osama bin Laden.

For many years ISI has prevailed on the Pakistani Government to prevent the US from closing these camps or from choking off the distribution of Saudi funds.

These military training camps DO produce international terrorists but ISI has successfully sold the idea (to its Government) that they also produce unofficial, hence deniable, recruits to fight the Indians in Kashmir (shades of David Hicks’ career).

All this is what is called a (Pakistani) covert action program. An indication that such programs are not a CIA monopoly.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com