IT was not long ago that President Obamas view about Indias demand for a permanent UN Security Council membership looked to be unfavourable. But once in India he felt so charmed by its traditional guiles that he succumbed to trampling over the sacrosanct provisions of international law and agreed to support it for a permanent seat in a body whose Charter it has openly violated. The clearest examples is Jammu and Kashmir, where it has gone back on its solemn commitments, made both at the UNSC and before the people of the state. In utter disregard of the UNSC resolutions, it refuses to hold a plebiscite to elicit the wishes of the people about their future and continues to forcibly occupy the state. And in order to retain the Occupation the Indian security forces, numbering one for every 14 Kashmiris, are on the ground to brutally suppress the defiant masses. The abuses that these forces regularly commit have been condemned not only by human rights organisations but also the US itself and the world at large. Yet, Mr Obama only mildly criticised India on this count and thought it fit to support its candidature for a permanent UNSC seat. The Pakistan Foreign Offices call for a review of the American position would not work because the US takes Islamabad for granted in whatever manner it treats its vital concerns. Thus, Obama confined himself to saying that negotiations were the key to peace in the region, an argument that he knows India thinks becomes valid only after Pakistan has satisfied it about the elimination of the so-called terrorist havens in the country. It could not have been the sights of its cultural heritage that could have cast a spell over Obama. The prospects of strategic gains Indias favours could entail for the imperialistic designs of the US; and the economic lure it affords for the American entrepreneur have been responsible for a turnaround of Candidate Obamas unbiased sentiments on Kashmir. It must be the misconception that New Delhi would stand up to the expansion of the Chinese influence in the region that would have proved the catalyst. To Pakistans share fall the killer drones that have, since Obamas advent in the White House, been indiscriminately hurling missiles on innocent civilians in Pakistans tribal areas, putting into question Washingtons oft-repeated assertion that Islamabad is its strategic partner and key ally in its so-called war on terror. He maintained that terrorist safe havens in Pakistan were unacceptable and insisted that it must bring to book the culprits involved in the Mumbai incidents, which means that he accepts Indias contention that the carnage was perpetrated by elements from Pakistan. It is time that Islamabad made a radical review of its kowtowing to US policies in the region and looked for other available options.