One of the first priorities of the Obama administration will be to reassess US strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, his aides say.

And as a first step, he has appointed Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and adviser to three US presidents on South Asia and the Middle East as his adviser on Pakistan.

His aides say that Obama is impressed with Mr Riedel's views and it was on his advice that Obama spoke of the need to resolve the Kashmir dispute in an interview with a US television network last weekend.

According to these aides, one of Riedel's long-time themes is that resolving the Kashmir dispute is essential for fighting terrorism.

But in doing so, Riedel does not emphasise the need to restoring the right of self-determination to the people of Kashmir. Instead, he 'advocates finding a solution that1

satisfies India and ends Pakistan's excuse for lingering the dispute.

A major part of Riedel's theory for ending conflicts in South Asia deals with persuading Pakistan to accept India's influence in the region and stop its efforts to counter India by promoting its own interests in places like Afghanistan.

By persuading India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute, Riedel also hopes to refocus the Pakistani military on fighting militants within its border, a point Obama also stressed in his interview to CNN last week. But this over-emphasis on the military option is already worrying experts on the Afghan conflict.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who is now an adviser to the Commander US Central Command Gen David Petraeus, said in an interview that instead of over-emphasising the military option, the Obama administration should develop "a regional approach" to ending the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakist&r." '1