Monitor: All the News of the World - Comment on the continuing dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir

PAKISTAN NEEDS to stop blowing on the fires of armed revolt in India-held Kashmir; this is basic. But India has its own responsibilities.The Indians want it both ways: to keep a tight grip on Kashmir and at the same time to deny Pakistan's effort to "internationalize" the issue; the Indians would confine it to exchanges between India and Pakistan. India can sustain this rigid posture, if at all, only by systematically and credibly widening the openings for democratic self-government in the part of Kashmir that, with two-thirds of a million troops, it holds.

The Washington Post, US

IT HURTS that the international community, including the US and Europe, maintained a complete silence over flagrant violations of the Line of Control by New Delhi in the past. But, appallingly, they all are reacting the way they are in regard to an allegation whose very veracity is absolutely questionable. One indeed thought that the Kargil imbroglio would awaken the international community to the Kashmir dispute's combustibility and stir it into action to defuse it once and for all. But what we are witnessing is a highly partisan and motivated approach to put Pakistan in the dock.

The Frontier Post, Pakistan

THAT THE Clinton administration appreciates India's stand on Kargil is a boost to India. But this support, New Delhi should bear in mind, is on the Kargil issue and not on Kashmir. Although American officials have maintained that the US will not play a mediatory role unless both India and Pakistan are in favour of it doing so, there have been reports that a US/ Western initiative to resolve the conflict is on the cards. Officials of the Ministry of External affairs have stated that third party mediation is "entirely unacceptable" to India. The differences between India and Pakistan is a bilateral matter, best addressed by the two neighbours across the negotiating table. New Delhi should take the initiative in negotiating the issues with Islamabad. Procrastinating on this will only give third parties, with their own agendas, scope for intervening in the matter.

Deccan Herald, India