HONG KONG -- Once again, Indo-Pakistani relations are seen to be teetering on the brink of potentially calamitous conflict. Yet too little attention is being paid to the possible solutions that could diminish the sustained Indo-Pakistani cold war with its proven tendency to occasionally become hot.
When Hong Kong's last Governor Chris Patten, now commissioner for External Affairs for the European Community, traveled to the subcontinent recently, did he pause to compare the first act of British decolonization in Asia with the last?
As British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited both Islamabad and Delhi soon afterward, and heard their diametrically opposed perspectives, did he stop to wonder how different things might have been had Britain been less eager to depart in 1947?