India’s measured response to United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon, who has just offered to mediate between India and Pakistan, would be to say: No, thanks! "The Secretary General urges both sides to exercise maximum restraint and take immediate steps to de-escalate the situation. Governments of Pakistan and India must address their outstanding issues, including regarding Kashmir, peacefully through diplomacy and dialogue. His good offices are available, if accepted by both sides," said a statement issued by the UN Secretary General's office.

Ban Ki-moon’s statement comes after Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN, met with the Secretary General on Friday. Taken aback at being isolated as a ‘terrorist state’, shamed by the six-nation boycott of SAARC Summit, Pakistan has been frantically trying to reach out to members of the UN Security Council. In striking contrast, Syed Akbaruddin, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, said that India had no desire to aggravate the situation. "India believes in ‘Ahimsa parmo dharma (non-violence is the highest moral virtue)’, but it doesn't mean we are indifferent to impunity. We have delivered a measured, proportionate counter terrorist strike, and our objectives have been met," he said.

Of course, the UN Secretary General may have sincerely offered to mediate between India and Pakistan as a way to defuse tensions. Yet, the reality, with due respect to his position, is otherwise. Jammu & Kashmir is not an international issue by any stretch of imagination. It has been Pakistan’s delusion that the United Nations needs to step in to resolve the ‘core’ issue. We have here a strange situation where a post-Partition conflicting situation, though purely India’s internal matter, has been deliberately distorted, magnified, and complicated by Pakistan over the decades with a view to attract the attention of the world to what the rogue nation projects as India’s ‘atrocities’ in Jammu & Kashmir.

Despite Pakistan’s delusional thinking, the incontrovertible fact remains that the strife in the State is mainly due to Pakistan’s nefarious designs to keep the theatre of war alive in Jammu & Kashmir for its own vested interests. The manner in which Islamabad has been propping separatists and terrorists to keep the State on the boil since the July 8th elimination of Hizbul Mujahideen local commander Burhan Wani as well as the brazen attacks on the Uri Army base and the Pathankot Air base reflect Pakistan’s unabashed efforts to internationalise the Kashmir issue. The United Nations, which had condemned the Uri terror attack, should have known by now, through its own sources --if not through evidence produced by India to Pakistan, that it was the handiwork of Islamabad. So, at least the UN chief should not take Pakistan’s bait.