No one listens to Pakistan on Kashmir: daily

Islamabad, Feb 6: The world has stopped listening to Pakistan's ritualistic appeals to resolve the Kashmir dispute with India based on old UN resolutions, a newspaper said on Friday.

One reason for this is that "unfortunately Pakistan does not pull the same weight as India any more, our protestations and ambitions in this regard notwithstanding", an editorial in the Daily Times said.

"The only problem with (Pakistan's) 'principled' reiteration of our deepest hopes and desires (over Kashmir) is no one out there is listening any more," it said.

"The world as a whole has tired of hearing our repeated pleas for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute, not the least because over time, other, more urgent problems have overtaken all this..."

The editorial said that Pakistan remained strong on rhetoric "but with an empty closet on practicable solutions to the conflict in today's world".

It said India had now made it more difficult for "fighters" to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan.

"Since our leadership has now come out (in retaliation to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's hardline stance) with a 'no Kashmir in agenda, no talks' mantra again, the prospects of a rational, negotiated solution to the Kashmir conflict have receded over the horizon even further...

"In the circumstances, and amid Islamabad's hopes that US nudging may bring India back to the table, perhaps the only realistic option is that if both countries cannot achieve normalisation and peace, at least they should learn to manage their mutual mistrust to avoid war."

IANS