The Continued Deadlock

Abstract

There was an interval of a few months before the Security Council was seized of the problem again. Mr. Mohammed Ali, Secretary-General of the Pakistan Government, told at a new plan after he had returned from Lake Success, but its examination awaited the discussions at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference scheduled in London in January 1951, in which Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan intended to raise the question. A series of communications between London, New Delhi and Karachi ensued in the course of which India’s opposition to any Commonwealth discussion of a problem between two of its members was made known, and Pakistan’s insistence on a discussion of the problem increased in direct proportion to the Indian disapproval. Mr. Liaquat All Khan finally played his trump card by politely declining the invitation to attend the Conference unless discussion of the Kashmir problem was assured, and the deadlock was resolved by an agreement to raise the issue informally at the Conference. Owing to the illness of Mr. Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, the meeting took place on 16 January 1951 at his residence in Savoy Hotel rather than at 10 Downing Street, the usual venue of such meetings. The Prime Ministers of India, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon and Pakistan were present and the discussion on the Kashmir problem lasted for an hour.