Indian official 'bleak' on future ties with Pakistan

The Guardian quoted a cable as saying that Indian foreign ministry official Y.K. Sinha's tone and substance of comments regarding Pakistan, at a meeting with US officials, were relentlessly negative.

Sinha urged the US "to see through and resist Pakistan's game of promising cooperation in Afghanistan in return for US pressure on India to sort out Pakistan's problems with India", the cable said.

Sinha accused Pakistan of falsely claiming that India posed a grave threat on Pakistan's border.

"If they really believed that, they never would have withdrawn an entire army corps from the east and deployed it in the west," Sinha argued.

Sinha claimed that an essential element of Pakistani policy was to "try to internationalize every bilateral issue between us (India and Pakistan)".

"To illustrate his point, he (Sinha) cited Pakistani claims that India is unjustly diverting water from Pakistan, accusations that he said were shown to be false by Pakistan's recent bumper harvest in Punjab.

"In fact water cooperation, Sinha claimed, is the one area of the bilateral relationship that actually works."

Sinha stated he is "convinced that LeT (Lakshar-e-Taiba) is a creature of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and armed by the ISI".

"He (Sinha) delivered a bleak long-term prognosis for India-Pakistan relations. 'Call me a cynic,' Sinha sighed, 'but even if India were to lop off Kashmir and hand it on a platter to Pakistan, they would still find a reason to make trouble for us," the US cable says.