February 8, 2001 17:08: THE devastating earthquake in the state of Gujarat in India has at least demonstrated once again the fragile nature of human existence in the face of natural catastrophes, which have the power to dramatically upturn a whole way of life of millions of people in a matter of minutes.

The tragedy has also brought humanity a little closer and as a result the earthquake-savaged area's victims are receiving food, shelter, clean drinking water and medicine.

Apart from the estimated 30,000 dead, the earthquake has created nearly a million homeless people, who need long-term help if their shattered lives are to be rebuilt in the near future.

Among the aid arriving for the victims from abroad have been a few plane loads of urgently needed tents, blankets and medicine from Pakistan, but more importantly the tragedy has established public contact between the governments of India and Pakistan, which may lead to an improvement in relations between the two giant neighbours.

Unfortunately, if past performance is to be a yardstick then the brief thawing of relations between the two countries is unlikely to lead to the solving of the one issue which has created bad feelings between India and Pakistan over the last 53 years and of course resulted in two wars.

The landlocked state of Kashmir is a Muslim majority state of nearly 13 million people and has been split between the two neighbours, both of whom now bristle with nuclear weapons, since the British left India in 1947.

Indian governments have promised to hold an internationally supervised plebiscite to ascertain the will of the people.

Once the Kashmir issue has been settled then everything else should be easy enough to solve and lead to normalisation of diplomatic, cultural and trade relations, which can benefit both countries rather than lead them to spend more and more in a futile arms race.