Monday, May 30, 2011

India, Pakistan Hold Talks on Strategic Glacier

NEW DELHI - Top defense officials from India and Pakistan kicked off talks May 30 over a disputed glacier high in the Himalayas where troops have clashed intermittently for decades.
The two-day meeting in New Delhi between Indian Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar and his Pakistani counterpart Syed Ather Ali is part of the slow-moving peace process aimed at bringing lasting stability to South Asia.
India broke off all contact with Pakistan in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which were staged by the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba according to Indian and Western intelligence.
An Indian defence ministry official said the two secretaries met behind closed doors, where they were to discuss the militarized 20,800-foot high Siachen glacier in Kashmir.
India in 1984 sent troops and occupied strategic areas on the glacier, raising fears of another full-blown war between the neighbors, and three years later the militaries fought a fierce skirmish in the region.
The two armies clashed intermittently until a ceasefire in November 2003, but the fierce cold and harsh conditions are thought to have cost more lives than combat - the temperature on the world's highest battlefield drops to minus-70 degrees Celsius (minus-94 degrees Fahrenheit) in winter.
A security analyst said the ongoing talks on Siachen, which is about 47 miles long and nearly three miles wide, may not bear fruit.
"Right now, our position is that 'you mark your ground positions on the map and give us an assurance that once we vacate [Indian posts] you will not occupy,' " retired Indian Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta said.
"Pakistan will, of course, not agree to that and so it will be zero outcome and we will meet once again," the Indian analyst said, referring to 11 previous unsuccessful meetings over the icy mass.
India wants "iron-clad" proof of existing Pakistani military positions to dissuade Pakistan from moving its soldiers forward in the event of troop withdrawals.
Relations between the estranged neighbors, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, have improved over the last year after contacts between prime ministers and other senior government figures.
But India has recently sharpened its criticism of Pakistan and its alleged state funding of militant groups in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden.
At the weekend, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the leadership in Islamabad must "wake up" to the "terror machine", while Home Minister P. Chidambaram warned last week that Pakistan was becoming a "fragile" state.
India considers the Siachen glacier strategic because of its location between China and both the Pakistani- and Indian-controlled zones of divided Kashmir.

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