Word: kashmir
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...blasts came on the 10th anniversary of New Delhi's nuclear weapons tests in Rajasthan - tests that confirmed India as a nuclear weapons power and led to an escalation of tensions with Pakistan, which subsequently tested its own nuclear bomb. The neighbors, at loggerheads over the disputed territory of Kashmir since independence six decades ago, almost resumed hostilities earlier this decade. But in the past few years, tensions have eased, in part, because Pakistan's government and security agencies have been busy dealing with the many problems at home...
...Iran considers itself the leader of the world's Shi'ite Muslims, and India has the world's second largest Shi'ite population, at 20 million. Iran has previously backed India against Pakistan's claims over Kashmir in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an international forum of Muslim and Muslim-majority countries. Iranian ports have also allowed India to circumnavigate Pakistan in trading with Central Asia. Iran, for its part, needs Indian business, investment and technology cooperation...
...flashpoint in six decades of conflict has been Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan. For years Pakistan had actively supported a guerrilla insurgency against the Indian authorities, but Islamabad seems to have bent to U.S. pressure and called off the biggest Pakistan-sponsored Kashmir jihadist groups. Pakistani officials long suspected of meddling in Kashmir have lately been kept busy with problems closer to home, such as the insurgencies along the the border with Afghanistan and elsewhere in Pakistan...
...India's political leaders, meanwhile, appear to have grasped the reality that political stability and development in Kashmir could be of benefit to all. Violence there has been reduced to the point where the Kashmir insurgency is no longer even the biggest internal security issue facing India. Last year, the number of people killed by a Maoist insurgency in eastern and central India was higher than those killed in the Kashmir Valley. "The entire thinking is changing," says Balraj Puri, the director of the Institute of Jammu and Kashmir Affairs and author of a recent book entitled Kashmir: Insurgency...
...take a conciliatory and politically smart approach to its neighbor. Asif Ali Zardari, who took over the reins of the Pakistan People's Party after the assassination of his wife Benazir Bhutto in December, says that India and Pakistan should not be held "hostage" to the dispute over Kashmir, and that the two countries "can wait" to resolve their impasse at a later time. "That is a situation we can agree to disagree [on]," he told a TV reporter last week. "Countries do, we have positions, you have positions... We can wait. We can be patient till everybody grows...