Pakistan urges India to cool rhetoric over Kashmir

 Pakistan urged India on Thursday to tone down the "Pakistan bashing" over a spate of military clashes in Kashmir between the nuclear-armed neighbors, and again offered foreign minister-level talks to try to cool tensions.
"I think it is important not to let this cycle escalate into something which becomes even more ugly than it is today," Pakistani High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir said in an interview with Reuters. "Let's try to see if we can cool down and resume normal business."
Three Pakistani and two Indian soldiers have been killed this month in the worst outbreak of tit-for-tat violence in Kashmir since India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire along a de facto border there nearly a decade ago.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since partition in 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region that both claim.
Following public and media outrage after India said one of its soldiers had been decapitated, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said there could be "no business as usual" with Pakistan, and the army chief said his commanders should retaliate if provoked.
Bashir said India could have worked with Pakistan to get to the bottom of what happened instead of "stirring raw emotions and upping the rhetoric", adding that "Pakistan bashing has become fashionable" in India.
He told Reuters that the killing of the soldiers on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir was not carried out by Pakistani troops.
"Such heinous acts ... are of course condemnable irrespective of where they happen and when they happen. But to say that these were done by Pakistan, that the Pakistan army was responsible, is something that we cannot agree to," he said.

India-Pakistan: A Pre-Poll Charade

It was reported in our media after a press briefing by Gen. Bikram Singh, our Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), on January 14, 2013, that intruding Pakistani troops had carried out two beheadings of Indian soldiers even in 2011. For reasons unclear, neither the Government of India nor the opposition nor the media chose to publicise this incident. It was kept a well-guarded secret. There was no public outrage and this incident did not impact on the on-going dialogue between the two countries.

On January 8, 2013, some Pakistani troops intruded into Indian territory in the Jammu area, killed two Indian soldiers and beheaded one of them. The details of the barbaric act were given wide publicity, discussed in no-rhetoric-barred TV debates and gave rise to public outrage and tough talk by the COAS. The opposition spearheaded by the BJP sought to exploit the public outrage for partisan political purposes.

It is against this background that one should analyse the seeming metamorphosis of our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on January 15. On the occasion of a function to observe the annual Army Day, one saw a transformation of Dr. Manmohan Singh from a man of eternal goodwill to Pakistan to one of tough talk and action.Why this difference in our reactions to the 2011 and 2013 beheadings? The answer is simple. In 2011, the election year 2014 was far away. In 2013, it is just a few months away. There may be votes to be gained by fanning further and exploiting the public outrage. The BJP was the first to jump into the fray for indulging in the game of politicization of the barbaric act in order to reiterate its demand, which has broad public support, for a strong response to Pakistan, even if it meant freezing of the bilateral dialogue. A number of senior retired civilian and military officers joined the war dance promoted by our TV channels. Anyone who kept out of this war dance was ridiculed as a softie.