I have just returned from a five day visit to Pakistan during the Christmas recess.
Having so many Pakistani constituents (almost all from the Kashmiri city of Meerpur) I have been visiting Pakistan every few years since being your Member of Parliament and co-founded the Parliamentary All Party Kashmiri Group in the 1980s.
No British MP had been to Pakistan since Benazir Bhutto's death last year and the election saw her husband Zhadhari elected as President. Since then the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the capital, has been blown up and there have been bombs and deaths in Mumbai.
I went as part of a four person delegation lead by Mohammed Sarwar, MP for Glasgow Central (the first Muslim MP elected in Britain in 1992). We had meetings with the President, Mr Zhadhari, the Prime Minister, Mr Gilani and the British High Commissioner.
I have been visiting the High Commission for 25 years but since I was last there it has been turned into a fortress hedged in by 15 foot high concrete walls, barbed wire and road blocks.
Pakistan, is on the front line of international terrorism. The situation in Afghanistan has led to more than 3 million refugees crossing the mountains, ill-defined borders into Pakistan to find food, shelter and safety. Among them inevitably are militant extremists, and the 700 plus Palestinians killed in Gaza over this past week make the job of recruiting insurgents from among these refugees all the easier. It is a desperate situation to which there is no easy solution, but it is certain that there will be no military 'victory'. Vice President Biden was in Islamabad at the same time as we were and saw the President the same afternoon. Peter Mandelson is visiting in the next month to discuss bi-lateral trade. Dialogue is essential but it is going to be a long road in Pakistan, India and in Gaza.