The US and European Union (EU) have an interest in Indo-Pak reconciliation but can play only a modest role in this regard, said Robert M. Hathaway, Director Asia Programme in Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Wednesday.
"The outside world including the EU and United States clearly have an interest in India and Pakistan reconciling but at the end of the day the fundamental decisions have to come from within the region," he told APP in an interview here on Wednesday.
He was here to give a talk on "The US and the Sub-continent: A new dawn," which was organised by University of Leicester's Institute for the Study of Indo-Pakistan Relations at the International Institute of Strategic Studies here on Tuesday.
Pakistan and India have agreed to continue their dialogue on all issues including Kashmir in May-June following a meeting, which culminated in their Foreign Secretary level talks in Islamabad last week.
"The Indians and Pakistanis have to make a political decision that to risk, a moving forward, on their old path of enmity, are greater than the risk involved in working towards peace," said the American scholar.
If the two leaderships in the two countries make that decision then "I think that the outside world can play a modestly useful role," said Hathaway.
"But the real trick is getting the political leadership in India and Pakistan to make the political decision to move forward, he said adding given over 50 years of Pakistan-Indian relations one needed to be cautiously optimistic.
Having said that, he said "I think we are looking at the last best chance and perhaps the best chance for the peace in the region for many years.
Seems to be that the political constellation in both India and Pakistan are lining in such a way that those domestic forces within each country favour reconciliation, are very strong at this point."
Hathaway said he was "modestly optimistic that this time, unlike the past, the two sides may actually decide to move forward."
Answering another question, he said, "in smaller and important ways the rest of the world can push these two sides together, it needs to be done from behind the scenes."
"The last things that should be done is for the Indians and for Pakistanis to have the impression" that the US, Britain and the Europeans were "trying to push them into a deal that is contrary to their interests."
He said at the end of the day the peoples of those countries have to decide for their own purposes that this is in their interest.
Then the outside world "can play a modest role in facilitating communication or in sharing the ideas but it should be done quietly behind the scenes," he said.
Replying to another question he said there were host of things that could be done collectively between the two countries as they could increase the level of confidence between the two neighbours.
He emphasised the need to build a whole range of confidence building measures and if they were implemented they, over the time could "lead the decision makers in both countries to have the confidence to take further risks in the direction of promoting peaceful relations between the two of them."