Patriotism, dignity, self-esteem are all vital and healthy ingredients necessary for making a well-rounded, and balanced individual. Shiv Shanker Memon used to behave like a mouse when he was India's high commissioner to Pakistan. But now as India's foreign secretary did you hear him try and roar the other day? The gems that flowed from this would-be Royal Bengal Tiger would make Asprey's drool. The immediate problem is the Joint Statement issued by India and Pakistan after their two prime ministers met in Sharm El-Sheikh on the 16th of this month. In a rare moment of sanity, India agreed that, "action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed. Prime Minister Singh said that India was ready to discuss all issues with Pakistan, including all outstanding issues." All hell broke loose in India and the government came under a barrage of fire. To help stop the fur flying Bill's wife contributed to making a bad situation worse with the banal statement that, "we firmly believe that a significant number of" the perpetrators of 9/11 "are there in the border areas of Pakistan." Tell me something new, Madam. Descending into India-speak she then asserted: "And we have conveyed to Pakistan that we are looking for additional information on them." Oh Are we Madam? Aren't we just? For God's sake lady, you have your CIA agents crawling all over our country (Americans and Pakistanis) with concentration "in the border areas of Pakistan." The largest CIA base outside the USA is in our Frontier province and has been since the Afghan Jihad of the Eighties when you were busy creating these terrorists then called muhajideen and now called Taliban and Al-Qaeda. You taught our people the heroin trade to finance the Jihad. Your drones are flying all over my country without "let or hindrance", filming everything. And you want us to give you "additional information on them" and tell you where the "terrorists" are? Truth is, you should tell us, for you know better. Come back Condi, all is forgiven. When oh when will we learn that America is another name for fickleness? In a roar that became a pathetic squeak, Tiger Menon told Indian MPs in a lecture entitled Challenges and Opportunities for India's foreign policy that, "the joint statement can be blamed for bad drafting but the meaning is clear that the composite dialogue is not delinked from Pakistan taking action on terrorism." How? Does "action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed" mean "the composite dialogue is not delinked from Pakistan taking action on terrorism." Wow That's quite a somersault, even for an Indian diplomat. India's foreign office mandarins, no less than ours, take great pride in their fastidiousness and attention to all nuances and possible interpretations of every single word, phrase and sentence while preparing drafts. They make a painful song and dance of it, always turning it into a great production. "Good drafting" is their pride and joy. Indian diplomats are amongst the best in the world when it comes to nit picking. So what happened at Sharm El-Sheikh? Did the Indians of their foreign office fall asleep or did our mandarins mesmerise them? Were they drunk? The Indian prime minister is an educated man who won't let any slip ups pass easily, unlike our guy who will read (or at least try to) and sign anything he is told to. Obviously Manmohan Singh went along because he knew that it was the right thing to say because it is the only realistic thing to say. Not to be left out, Shashi Tharoor had to put in his two paisa's worth - you remember that rather-handsome guy with the light grey eyes in the UN who tried to become its secretary general, he with an angreezi accent that would make the English blush. ("He can't beat our current UN guy on accent, English and sparkling conversation Abu," said my daughter Mashaal when she read this). Apparently, Tharoor is now rejoicing as India's state minister for external affairs. In a stunning Indian dance of semantics he declared that the Sharm El-Sheikh joint statement was a "diplomatic paper" and not a "legal document". He should have given us the code to decipher their meanings too. One presumes that a "legal document" is something the Indians would stand by and implement. Which begs the question: are the UN Security Council resolutions about holding a plebiscite in Kashmir "legal documents" or not? And if they are, why the hell don't you implement them? By the way, for I may not get another chance, these foreign office wallahs nurture yet another creature called a "non paper". Is that only a verbal statement? No, it's on paper but it's a "non-paper", meaning we don't stand by what is said on it, I suppose, or what is written on it doesn't really exist. Anyway, one hopes to continue enjoying Mr Tharoor's lightweight articles that appear in some Pakistani newspaper every now and then. Why don't India's official geniuses as well as ours understand that they are both essentially saying the same thing? India says no dialogue without Pakistan first taking effective action against anti-India terrorists on its soil and then finishing them off entirely. Pakistan says India must seriously agree to discuss the core issue of Kashmir towards resolving it to the satisfaction of all three parties to the dispute - India, Pakistan and above all, the people of Kashmir. It's the same thing. Look: if Kashmir is resolved anti-Indian terrorism will go away. It's as simple as that. The two things are totally interconnected, to the exclusion of everything else. Solve Kashmir, no terrorism. Don't solve Kashmir and Pakistan can do a tap dance, anti-India terrorism, which to the Kashmiris and many of us is a legitimate freedom struggle, will not go away. And by the way, the Americans should also understand, that until they get out of Afghanistan and the Palestinians get their own viable state with its capital in East Jerusalem, anti-American terrorism will not go away either. The only realistic choices are: do you want to resolve Kashmir honourably or do you wish to be consumed by terrorism eventually (regardless of what happens to Pakistan) and do you wish to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute honourably by putting the Israelis back behind their pre-1967 borders and creating a viable Palestinian state, or do you wish Israel and America to be consumed by "terrorism" one day, which to the majority of the world is the legitimate freedom struggle of the Palestinians to reclaim their usurped homeland. The choice is yours. The choice is stark. The writer is a senior political analyst. E-mail: humayun.gauhar@gmail.com