Author:
Publication: Deccan Chronicle
Date: November 4, 2002
Bangladesh war hero field Marshal
S H F J Manekshaw has said India twice lost a chance to resolve the
Kashmir issue during Ayub Khan's regime and allowed the problem
to grow "big".
Expressing regrets that nobody either
in India or Pakistan had been strong enough to solve the issue, Manekshaw
claimed that way back an option had come up when Pakistani military
ruler Ayub Khan had proposed to late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru
that as both of them were unquestioned leaders in their respective
countries, they could move towards a solution of the Kashmir problem.
"Ayub Khan, president of Pakistan,
who, though senior to me, was a friend," Manekshaw told newsmen at
the sidelines of a Kargil war book release.
"I saw Nehru, I told him, I can
do what I like in Pakistan and nobody dare say anything and Panditji,
you can commit murder in India and everybody will say wah! wah! so,
can we sort it out," the former army chief quoted the Pakistani strongman
as having told him.
"But Panditji said, "You have no
right to be in Kashmir. Kashmir belongs to us," Manekshaw said Ayub
Khan had told him adding, "So it could have been done then".
He said the second opportunity to
solve Kashmir issue came after the 1971 war, when the then Pakistani
prime minister Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, after promising to cooperate
on resolving the issue to late prime minister Indira Gandhi, got
away with only seeking time for it.
"Bhutto told Gandhi, `I have just
taken over from Yahya Khan. If I do anything now, they will throw
me out. Give me a chance, I promise you, everything will be okay.'
But he had no damned intention of ever doing anything," he said.
