FOR the past five years, Indian diplomats adopted a curiously passive position on Kashmir that has ended by putting India and not Pakistan in the dock before world opinion; and making it Indias responsibility to be reasonable and make concessions in the interest of peace. This little drama has been played out once again at the SAARC summit. Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif reiterated that the Kashmir problem lay at the core of tension that had bedeviled Indo-Pak relations for five decades, and was now threatening the subcontinent and the world with a nuclear arms race. Atal Behari Vajpayee did nothing to rebut this powerf ulassertion, and contented himself with asking for a comprehensive and composite dialogue between the two countries at the level of their foreign secretaries.