President of the United States has said he “would love to be a mediator “for the frozen conflict between India and Pakistan. While Pakistan said Trump had the potential to “bring the two countries together,” India appeared less interested in this regard. The USA is the most powerful country in the world and it can play a very important role for peace in the subcontinent,” Khan said, according to a government tweet. “Over a billion people … are held hostage to Kashmir situation and I believe that Donald Trump can bring to two countries together.” Since President Trump has offered his mediatory role in the Kashmir issue, a move that China sanely backs, it is the right moment that New Delhi– instead of brooding over this peace development and showing indifference to the Trump statement– should respect Trump’s offer keeping in view the validity of this truth: like Afghanistan there is no military solution of the Kashmir issue. India must accept Kashmiris’ right of self-determination— given to them by the UN’s Charter of human rights. According to President Trump, “I was with Prime Minister Narendra Modi two weeks ago (on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan) and we talked about this subject and he actually said ‘Would you like to be a mediator or arbitrator’, I said ‘Where’, He said ‘Kashmir’. Because this has been going on for many, many years … I think they would like to see it resolved and you (Imran Khan) would like to see it resolved. If I can help, I would love to be a mediator.” The process of mediation ensures acceptance of the outcome by both parties, thereby enhancing sustainable peace via active engagement. The role and the conduct of the mediator seem very crucial for a successful mediation to take place. Jacob Bercovitch defines mediation, in the international context, as “a process of conflict management, related to but distinct from the parties’ own negotiations, where those in conflict seek the assistance of, or accept an offer of help from, an outsider. . . to change their perceptions or behavior, and to do so without resorting to physical force or invoking the authority of law.” In mediation, the process is a negotiation with the help of a neutral third party. The parties do not reach a conflict resolution unless all sides agree. In arbitration, a neutral third party acts as a judge who is all and all responsible for resolving the dispute. Be it mediation or arbitration, the role to be played by president Trump seems very demanding and challenging in enduring rivalry caused by an internal Kashmir freedom movement defining the current state of the conflict between India and Pakistan. The circumstances are now in place to give a third party the opportunity to act as a mediator in the long-standing conflict, as well as in the dispute between India and the Kashmiri freedom insurgency. The progress and status of the dispute, as well as the dynamics of the triadic relationship between India and Pakistan and the US, are also important factors for consideration. And yet not surprisingly, India’s foreign minister Ubrahmanyan Jaishankar denied Donald Trump’s claim that the US president was invited by the Indian government to mediate in the Kashmir dispute. There is no way to resolve the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan other than involving the role of third-party mediation. Obviously, the US is still the major world power whose role in global affairs holds paramount importance In his rebuttal to India’s refutation of Trump’s claim that premier Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate on Kashmir, a top presidential advisor Larry Kudlow said, ”President Donald Trump does not make up things.” While Pakistan has pragmatically called for third-party involvement over the long-running dispute; India has euphorically insisted the issue could only be resolved via bilateral talks with Islamabad-an illusion based Indian perception far away from reality. But what so ever remain the expediencies about Indian denial over Trump’s statement, this is an irrefutable fact that without a third party involvement, this Kashmir’s stalemate cannot be resolved. By any standard of fair play, New Delhi must not deny the fact that the fate of the Shimla Agreement of 1972 remained dwindled because of Indian assertion to resolve the issue through the bilateral parameters while Islamabad justifiably asserted for the amicable solution in the light of the UNSC; resolutions of 1949. And yet seen from a logical analogy, the two agreements-the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) and the agreement pertaining to the Rann of Kutch Dispute-have diplomatically survived the hostility and the low and high ebbs in bilateral relations. Both are the glaring examples of third party mediation. Yet unlike the IWT, the Rann of Kutch accord (signed in June1965 on British intervention) was primarily centred on the issue of territory. Though the Indian sceptics of extending this approach to Kashmir meekly argue that the Rann was a mere piece of marshland, yet a neutral appraisal of the negotiating process suggests that this piece of marshy land entailed many complicated dimensions-thereby justifying the arbitration of the ICJ tribunal in 1968. And most pertinently, the case of Kosovars’ independence holds relevance here. In 2012 the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize because of Brussels’ long time endowment for peace reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. The negotiations via EU-UN-US mediation served as the hallmark to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Therefore, the role of mediation in the conflict zones is the most growing feature of promoting peace in the 21st century. China has justifiably supported the Trump move and there is every possibility that Russia will also endorse it. And also undeniably, the Kashmir conflict not only continues to raise the spectres of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, but it also continues to cause serious human rights abuses in terms of summary executions, rape forced disappearances of the Kashmiris. Indian security forces have unjustly resorted to arbitrary arrest and collective punishments of entire neighbourhoods– tactics which have only led to intensifying hatred from India. Under these circumstances, there is no way to resolve the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan other than involving the role of third-party mediation. Obviously, the US is still the major world power whose role in global affairs holds paramount importance. Given this argument, any meaningful US role in the Kashmir dispute could open a gateway to peaceful negotiations between India and Pakistan, and yet without this resourceful mechanism, there seems no possibility that New Delhi and Islamabad could reach an amicable settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan