Washington: As Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Pakistan, American officials said the US was very supportive of recent moves by India and Pakistan to normalise relations, but there was no change in its hands off Kashmir policy.
"There's no change in policy in terms of where we are on that," a senior administration official accompanying Kerry told reporters on way to Islamabad on Thursday when asked if he expected to have a conversation about Kashmir with the Pakistani Government. "We are in no way seeking to broker any sort of conversation on Kashmir between India and Pakistan, though US is supportive of the moves that both the countries have made to normalise the relations," the officials said.
He added that great strides on economic front in the last few years have really paved the way for better and more constructive talks on the political side. "During his June trip to India, Kerry has urged both India and Pakistan to continue the process of facilitation, while asked Pakistan to do things like providing most favoured nation (MFN) status to India," he said. Sharif Government has already began the process of reaching out to India and with good cooperation from Indian side relations between both the countries will normalise, he added.
The official said "the great strides in normalisation on the economic side have been very important the last few years and have really paved the way for better and more constructive conversations on the political side. And I'm sure that that will be part of the conversations that we continue to have," the official said. "But we are external actors in this. We are in no way seeking to broker any sort of conversation on Kashmir."
Asked about Pakistan's refusal to give up their use of proxies through certain domestic terrorist groups in the Indo-Pak context, the official said this would be a part of the conversation with the Pakistanis. "As we've said to them in the past, fostering or helping in any way to provide some sort of base for extremism is ultimately not in any of our interests, including in Pakistan's interest," he said.
"We'll have to see where the new government is on this and what they're willing to do as how they see it as part of their broader efforts at promoting stability," the official said. "That's in large part one of the reasons we want to have to this conversation face to face and see how far we can move this forward."
