Why do such conferences get hold in third countries and not in India and Pakistan. There should be exchange of students between two countries from high school level to Masters/Phd level. Indian universities should allocate certain seats in universities for Pakistani students and vice versa.
Indian and Pakistani Americans can help achieve this goal.
–
Indian and Pakistani teens battle brainwashing at peace conference
By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer
SINGAPORE - not just the soldiers on their border — undermine lasting peace between India and Pakistan, teen delegates from the rival nations said at a peace conference in Singapore on Thursday.
“We have been brainwashed,” said Indian Anmol Tikoo, 18, a Hindu from Balbharati Public School in New Delhi who fled with his family from Kashmir ( news - web sites) when he was six. “Brainwashing and developing hatred toward other nations is not acceptable or tolerable.”
Thirty-eight students from India and Pakistan have come to Singapore for a weeklong congress focusing on the Kashmir conflict. The conference is intended to foster trust between the two groups of teen-agers, said organizer Melissa Kwee.
Rabia Mir, 17, a Muslim from The City School in Karachi, Pakistan, said the conference had allowed her to step back and look at the conflict as an observer for the first time.
“The history we have been taught through our childhood in our textbooks is wrong,” Mir said, after the students compared their texts.
Indian school books say Pakistan initiated a war over Kashmir in 1965 — one of two the nuclear-armed neighbors have fought over the region. But according to Pakistani books, India was to blame for the battle.
Among other subjects the textbooks differ over is when India’s army first entered Kashmir and over whether Muslims tribes moved into the region on their own initiative or with Islamabad’s encouragement.
India and Pakistan have about 1 million troops along their common frontier and there have been fears of a third war in recent months.
Muslim militants have been fighting since 1989 for the independence of India’s portion of Kashmir, or its merger ( news - external web site) with Islamic Pakistan. An estimated 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Mir said she intends to return to Pakistan and fight the propaganda there by “reverse brainwashing” her young friends to look at Indians differently.
On Thursday, Mir took part in a trust exercise that had her walking blindfolded across a narrow beam high in the air while an Indian teammate guided her across. The girls both wore harnesses and were attached to each other.
“It made us realize this issue is for the both of us — like war — a no-win situation,” Mir said. “If one tumbled, we would both go down.”
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020627/ap_wo_en_po/singapore_kashmir_peace_2