WASHINGTON: Two weeks after he offered to mediate between Pakistan and India on the Kashmir issue , US President Donald Trump has remained conspicuously silent on the matter even as his administration clarified on Wednesday that New Delhi “did not consult or inform the US Government before moving to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status.”

Meanwhile, a United Nations ’ human rights spokesman expressed concern about the situation in the state saying the latest restrictions, including blanket telecommunications clampdown, arbitrary detention of political leaders, and curtailing peaceful assembly, will exacerbate matters."

“The restrictions will prevent leaders from participating fully in the democratic debate on the future status of Jammu and Kashmir,” a UN Human Rights spokesman said, reopening a chapter that had long been consigned to a status quo.

Read also: Pakistan expels Indian envoy, suspends all bilateral trade

However, there has been nothing censorious about Washington’s stand, and like most other countries, it appears to have recognized what New Delhi says is India’s right to settle its internal affairs, much to Pakistan’s dismay.

A tone-neutral State Department readout on Monday acknowledged the Indian government’s claim that its actions are “strictly an internal matter” while voicing concerns about reports of detentions and urging “respect for individual rights and discussion with those in affected communities”.

It also called on “all parties to maintain peace and stability along the Line of Control” without mentioning Pakistan, which believes it has some locus standi in the matter, but which no one else appears to recognise.

Read also: US closely following legislation on territorial status of J&K, official says

Trump himself, embroiled in having to defuse racial tensions in the US, appears to have no bandwidth to deal with a distant situation even though he enthusiastically offered mediation, ostensibly to comfort Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and get Islamabad’s cooperation in the US drawdown from Afghanistan .

The US President later refined his offer of mediation to clarify he would do so if Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited him to do so, but since then, even as New Delhi has moved to strengthen its writ in the Valley, Trump has tuned out of the issue, leaving many regional pundits to speculate how the US President views the situation.

While some experts have suggested that the Modi government’s steps were aimed at pre-empting Trump’s interference in the matter, others have noted that Washington is hardly in a position to intervene given its own stance in the Middle-East and elsewhere, where it backs a strong nationalist narrative, and its strong views on Pakistani terrorist depredations in the region.

US thinktankers and editorialists have also been muted on the issue, by and large recognizing and reconciling with India’s right to a constitutional and administrative reorganization of its state in its union, only a small part (the Valley) of which is in frequent turmoil. India’s ambassador to the US Harsh Vardhan Shringla told a Heritage Foundation gathering of scholars on Tuesday that the reorganization is an internal matter of India and it was aimed at changing the developmental dynamics of the state for the better.

"It's something that doesn't in any way touch upon or affect the LoC, the international boundary and therefore, doesn't have any impact on our relationship with any other state (country)," Shringla said, explaining that the reorganisation of a state is not a new concept in India, and Jammu and Kashmir is the twelfth state to undergo such changes.

The Indian-American community has also been putting its weight behind New Delhi’s move, coming out in support of the constitutional changes.

A small Kashmiri Pandit community, which for years has tried to make its voice heard in a city where lobbying is endemic, welcomed the government’s move, hoping the constitutional amendments will enable them to get justice and reclaim their ancestral homeland from where they were ethnically cleansed since the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is finding out to its dismay that it has virtually zero support in the US and in the international community, something even scholars with a record of sympathy for Islamabad are acknowledging.

“There is also the fact that many key governments, including the US, continue to prize their partnerships w/India, and they don't want to rock the boat. Washington's virtual (public) silence after India's move-even after Trump's (offhand) offers of mediation-is quite telling,” noted Michael Kugelman, a senior South Asia associate at the Wilson center.

"The big Q moving forward is how #Pakistan may respond, aside from mounting a global campaign to condemn India's move (this will be tough to do, given Pak's image problem)," he added.



In Video: US says not consulted on Article 370, Trump stays silent