SHEETAL KIRAN, from Pune, near Bombay, has been working at the Lancashire Evening Telegraph while visiting her family in Rossendale and spent part of her childhood in Northern India and has seen at first hand some of the effects of the conflict over Kashmir.

Here she spells out her own hopes for the future...

SNOW clad alpines, blossoming lotus covering every inch of translucent lakes turning them emerald green. Areas loaded with exquisite flowers, succulent apples, or more so, with tourists, lazily meandering across the lakes... Paradise on Earth.

Soldiers in camouflage gear, patrolling every street and lane, sand bagged army bunkers, guerillas detonating landmines, cross border shelling and firing....women and orphaned children weeping over bodies.

This is what has become of Kashmir, once known to the world as the Paradise on Earth, once the summer capital, once the greatest tourist attraction of the region, once the perfect romantic get away, and once where innumerable Bollywood films were shot.

It is difficult to believe how a state that had negligible crime statistics has been turned into a veritable battlefield.

People have forgotten how to live, not a soul is to be seen after 7pm in places near the Line of Control.

The local people eye every outsider quite suspiciously, whether he is an army official or just a visitor. They don't quite know whom they can trust.

Since 1947, innumerable treaties, agreements and declarations have been signed by the leaders of India and Pakistan, expressing their resolve to solve all contentious issues between the two countries, but they seem to have created more conflict, which has snowballed into a potential nuclear war. Can we really afford this?

There are people dying on the streets. Can a country that boasts of thousands of hungry, uneducated, dying people afford to go on war?

And what about the those villagers living in villages that fall near the official Line of Control? They are innocent victims caught not only between cross border firing but also between the belligerent egos of two neighbours. So, where do they go?

Should they dedicate their lives to shuttling between refugee camps, because there is the impending threat of a nuclear war? Hindus and Muslims irrespective of their religious beliefs have been co-existing peacefully with each other for centuries. What do they really want? Do we really know?

It is true that India has been subjected to terrorism for a decade, but we desperately need a solution to this long impending problem that has steadily gnawed its way though our people, and our resources, resources that could have been be utilized elsewhere. But is an armed conflict the only solution to our problem?

Isn't it time that we return what rightfully belongs to Kashmir - its terrain, its uniquely spiritual culture, its lakes blanketed with lotus blossoms, its gondola-like shikaras and house boats overflowing with tourists, and it's rosy cheeked children playing as "if there were tomorrow."