Until Pakistan is 'albatross around our necks', we'll not be able to take our due place in world: Mani Shankar Aiyar

livemint.com:

Manmohan Singh who clearly showed that if you do talk to the Pakistanis perhaps out of the public eye in an uninterrupted and uninterruptible way, you can resolve even the issue of Kashmir. After all, there was a four-point agreement that had been drafted and virtually agreed upon and it was not because the Pakistanis withdrew from that four-point agreement on Kashmir, but because the government of (Pervez) Musharraf fell into difficulty and eventually fell that the dialogue was interrupted," he said.

There is need to understand that any dialogue with Pakistan is going to suffer setbacks, is going to take time and we need to have the patience and persistence, to establish a viable relationship with Pakistan, he said. "So long as Pakistan is an albatross around our necks, we just will not be able to take our due place in the world.

It is ludicrous to suggest that India is the 'vishwaguru' when we don't know what to do with our neighbour," Aiyar stressed. Aiyar makes a strong case for good relations between the two countries in the book as well, saying common Pakistanis not only speak the same language as us and share much of the same 'tehzeeb' (culture), they love Bollywood and its music and laugh at the same jokes and befriend us everywhere outside the subcontinent.