He expressed the view that another Mumbai-style terrorist attack would most likely entail an Indian response that could well translate into a dangerous reality. He, however, expressed a lukewarm optimism regarding the feeling that a sort of dialogue was starting up again seeing that the process was slow and amounted to "watching a glacier melt."
In his opinion, Pakistan is "not a failed country but a failing country" and must seek co-operation from India on a range of issues "including water, environmental issues and trade and so forth" if it were to avoid economic and political failures in the long run. On the other hand, he reiterated that India must accommodate Pakistan on a wide range of issues, including the settlement of Kashmir, if it were to achieve the international prestige it aspires.
Asked why the US would not put pressure on India to move the dialogue forward, he stated the US perhaps lacked the leverage over India in this regard. He, however, was of the view that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was interested in finding a way to accommodate Pakistan while his efforts were being undermined by opposing politicians and the security forces which remained deeply suspicious of Pakistan and did not want to move the peace process forward.
Cohen also talked to the AAJ News team about the poor image the US enjoyed in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Islamic World when it comes to its visible lack of even-handedness regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. He admitted that while the US wished to maintain strong relations with Israel, it also wanted to help establish a state for the Palestinians.
He said that while it could be argued that this relationship might be damaging in some ways, on the whole Israelis desired both the US and Pakistan to have good relations. Cohen said that when President Musharraf met a leading Jewish figure in New York, he was contacted by the "so-called Israel lobby" to expand the connections between Pakistan and Israel.
He said Israel and Pakistan were very similar in that they were both established along religious principles and that both have encountered considerable difficulty in establishing themselves perhaps for the same reason. Asked about the perceived conspiratorial relationship between the Christians and Jews against Muslims, he argued that Pakistanis have better things to worry about than America's relationship with Israel, adding that US policy towards Israel has no connection to the US South Asia policy.
[Dr Cohen's interview on AAJ News at 10 pm tonight]