ALI Gilani, the leader of Kashmiris, who has made his life mission to espouse their cause, has once again urged India to act upon the UN Security Council resolutions to settle the dispute. There is little doubt that any measure that tends to sidetrack the heart of the problem (i.e. India's intransigent refusal to grant the people their right to decide their future) would not improve matters. Mr Gilani has, therefore, rightly turned down the recommendations of the working group on Kashmir that had been formed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to evaluate the situation in the valley and report. The group has come up with the suggestion that Held Kashmir should return to its pre-1953 status and the question whether it should become one the states of India should be left to the people to decide. As Mr Gilani maintains, the Kashmiris have not laid down their lives by tens of thousands to accept such an end. He has vowed to continue the struggle. The Kashmiri leader has, with equal vehemence, rejected the roadmap of the dispute's settlement that the US seems to have worked out. Although it has not yet been made public, there are reports that it revolves round the grant of internal autonomy to the state and removal of Indian troops. Thus, it constitutes a big comedown from the position Candidate Obama took, which correctly analysed the situation and saw the solution through the will of the people. The fact is that if the Americans really believe that the region in which Pakistan and India are located spawns terrorism posing a serious threat to their security, it follows that they tackle the causes that give rise to this dangerous phenomenon. And if they were to accept India's version, even though it is sheer distortion of reality, terrorist groups and not the local freedom fighters have been responsible for waging an armed struggle against its forcible occupation of the state, the Americans would be hard put to avoid the conclusion that the scourge would not go away without solution of the Kashmir dispute. And here lies the rub. The solution that would bring lasting peace to the subcontinent is not acceptable to India. There emerges another snag in the form of Washington's perception that its strategic interest calls for pampering New Delhi rather than pressurising it to honour its own commitments to let the Kashmiris exercise their right to self-determination. It would be a great pity if President Obama, whose vision of a peaceful world has caught the imagination of people of all lands, were to sacrifice a noble cause at the altar of a strategic interest whose validity many seasoned observers would doubt.