'India, Pakistan were close to Kashmir accord'

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf were close to signing an accord to end the decades-old conflict over Kashmir after three years of secret talks but failed to achieve the vital breakthrough, media reports here said.

The peace initiative is described in an article by investigative journalist Steve Coll. Writing in the New Yorker magazine, Coll writes that the two sides had 'come to semicolons' in their negotiations when the effort lost steam, the Washington Post said Sunday.

'The negotiations, which began in 2004, produced the outlines of an accord that would have allowed a gradual demilitarisation of the disputed Himalayan province, a flash point in relations between the rivals since 1947.

'The effort stalled in 2007, and the prospects for a settlement were further undermined by deadly terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November,' the Post said, quoting the New Yorker report.

The attempt ultimately failed, not because of substantive differences, according to Coll, but because declining political fortunes left Musharraf without the clout he needed to sell the agreement at home.

Although Musharraf fought for the deal - as did Manmohan Singh - he became so weakened politically that he 'couldn't sell himself', let alone a surprise peace deal with Pakistan's longtime rival, Coll notes, quoting senior Pakistani and Indian officials.

Musharraf resigned as president in August 2008.

Coll, a former Washington Post managing editor who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his book 'Ghost Wars', writes that the resolution of the Kashmir dispute was the cornerstone of a broad agreement that would have represented a 'paradigm shift' in relations between India and Pakistan: a moving away from decades of hostility to acceptance and peaceful trade.

The Post reports that under the plan, the Kashmir conflict would have been resolved through the creation of an autonomous region in which local residents could move freely and conduct trade on both sides of the territorial boundary.

Over time, the border would become irrelevant, and declining violence would allow a gradual withdrawal of troops that now face one another across the mountain passes.

'It was huge - I think it would have changed the basic nature of the problem,' the New Yorker article quoted a senior Indian official as saying. 'You would have then had the freedom to remake Indo-Pakistani relations.'