The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 193
177 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN But he could not just stop there. His directive from the Security Council was that if he could not obtain implementation of the Resolution of the Security Council, of the 21st of April, 1948, and the Resolutions of the Commission, he should try some other method of bringing about a settlement of the dispute. He proposed that the two Prime Ministers should agree to go into conference with him on a plan which he would develop in detail but the central feature of which would be that it would provide for certain areas of the State contiguous to India which had a clear non-Muslim majority acceding to India and the Azad Kashmir territory with its solid Muslim population acceding to Pakistan, leaving the future of the rest of the State, including the Valley, to be determined by a Plebiscite. He came to Karachi with that suggestion from Delhi and assured us that he had been told by the Prime Minister of India that he was willing to go into the proposed conference to discuss such a plan, and asked whether our Prime Minister would be willing to do the same. Our Prime Minister was very doubtful whether anything would result from such an effort, but in the end he agreed and Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, who was then Secretary General of the Cabinet, and I communicated to Sir Owen Dixon the Prime Minister's acceptance of his proposal. Sir Owen Dixon thought he could now go ahead and elaborated his plan. He said it would take him five days or perhaps a week to complete it and he would then fix the time and place of the meeting with the two Prime Ministers. He sent a telegram to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that he had obtained Liaqat Ali Khan's assent to such a meeting and now proposed to proceed with the elaboration of his plan. Promptly came a reply from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that this was the first that he had heard of this plan and would Sir Owen Dixon go to Delhi and discuss it with him. Sir Owen Dixon told me he was surprised at this message but that as the Prime Minister had asked him to go to Delhi it would be discourteous to refuse. He went to Delhi, and when he came back he told me that he had been met at the airport by Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, who was then Secretary General of the India Foreign Ministry and he said to him, "Sir Girja, it was, of course, perfectly opened to the Prime Minister to say that he had considered the matter further and he had come to the conclusion that he was not prepared to take part in the proposed conference, but how is it that he says this is the first he has