With India and Pakistan having become nuclear powers after their historic tests in mid-1998, it has become fashionable for the USA, and therefore the Western world, to talk of the Jammu & Kashmir imbroglio as being the globe's "nuclear flashpoint" -- to be avoided at all costs. As a matter of fact, the alarm of a total war on the issue would seem to have been sounded 36 years ago in a book of which large extracts are now posted on the web at http://www.parep.org.sg/dangerinkashmir/Dangerinkasmir.htm

Now, one had seen a reference or two to that book Danger in Kashmir by Josef Korbel, in Justice A S Anand's scholarly treatise on the Jammu & Kashmir State Constitution. But the Internet site cites the cover-page blurb about "the value of this book" and then dubs it in a headline as the 'US Administration's Recommended Reading On Kashmir'. One therefore simply had to go through it, especially because the first paragraph under that headline goes as follows:

"At a White House briefing on 4 July, 1999, after three-hour meetings between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Bill Clinton, a senior Administration Official was asked about the US position on Security Council Resolutions on Kashmir. The reply was "we are very aware of the history of Kashmir. In fact, if any of you wish to, you can go back to Secretary Albright's father's book 'Danger In Kashmir' that he wrote after being on the first UN commission [on Kashmir]."

rest of the article is at http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/feb/13arvind.htm

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