Kasuri's K deal

For most people, Kashmir is an intractable problem dividing India and Pakistan. What they don’t know is that the two countries have actually an accord on Kashmir ready and had almost unveiled it in 2007. Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, who was Pervez Musharraf ’s foreign minister from 2002 to 2007, said this hush-hush deal that was cobbled together through secret parleys held in India, Pakistan and several foreign capitals for more than three years and could have resolved the sub-continent’s thorniest security and political dispute, had not the anti-Musharraf upsurge triggered by the sacking of the chief justice convulsed Pakistan. Kasuri said he has never spoken of this track-II success earlier, other than saying he knew of a possible way to resolve the Kashmir problem that was acceptable to both countries. Kasuri said in an exclusive interview that negotiators from Islamabad and New Delhi had quietly toiled for three years, talking to each other and Kashmiri representatives from the Indian side as well as Kashmiris settled overseas to reach what he described as the “only possible solution to the Kashmir issue’’. He said the two sides had agreed to full demilitarisation of both Jammu & Kashmir as well as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which Islamabad refers to as Azad Kashmir. In addition, a package of loose autonomy that stopped short of the ‘azadi’ and self-governance aspirations, had been agreed upon and was to be introduced on both sides of the disputed frontier. “We agreed on a point between complete independence and autonomy,’’ he said. Kasuri said both countries, realizing the sensitivity of such a deal, had agreed not to declare victory or tom-tom the negotiations. Kasuri said that the hardline separatist, Sayeed Ali Shah Gilani, was the only Kashmiri leader who refused to come on board.