Dr Rashid Khan, former chairman of political science department at Punjab University, and presently a research fellow at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute has said that the peace process between Pakistan and India is 'irreversible and could not take a reverse gear.'
Addressing a function arranged by Islamabad Cultural Forum, he cited a number of reasons for his optimism. One reason was the tremendous enthusiasm found among the civil society of both the countries for a lasting entente to replace the present tension. He is author of three books on the international conflicts of the South Asian region, mainly concerning the two neighbouring countries of India.
'The international community is interested in facilitating talks between India and Pakistan and feels concerned that Kashmir question is allowed to fester unresolved, and therefore China, Japan, European countries Russia and the USA have played important behind the scene role to facilitate talks between the two countries.'
Dr Rashid Khan attributed economic reasons for the encouragement made by the above countries to remain engaged in reducing tensions between the two countries.
He said India wants to establish economic relations with the countries of West Asia, especially Afghanistan where it wanted to take position in trade, and wanted Pakistan to provide transit arrangements for its trade activities there to flourish.
Pakistan believed that it could not make substantial progress if there is no disengagement of troops. In his discourse, Dr Khan talked of two conflict situations of Sir Creek and Siachen in which he said some progress had been achieved in the peace negotiations.
In Sir Creek, he said the two sides had been able to move closer, were conducting joint surveys, and have prepared a joint map. He said Sir Creek was important for Pakistan due to its geo political and strategic reasons, and for undersea natural resources. As for Siachen, he said the two sides had agreed for it to remain as no man's land.
Dr Rashid attributed Nawaz Sharif as the builder of the peace process and said he (NS) were serious and in fact Vajpayee and the former prime minister had even agreed on a time frame for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute.
In fact India had a position of not talking only with elected leaders of Pakistan and the breakthrough came when on 18 April 2003 prime minister Vajpayee made a statement at Srinagar that there should be a focused discussion on Kashmir and there was a humanitarian angle to this problem. The then prime minister Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali gave a positive response to the statement.