Pakistan, India peace talks
Indian military may resist Siachen pullout

New Delhi—India’s army has warned against pulling out troops from Siachen glacier, ahead of talks between New Delhi and Islamabad which are expected to focus on the issue. Top diplomats of the neighbours will meet in New Delhi on Tuesday for two-day talks suspended after India blamed Pakistan for July train bombings in its financial capital Mumbai, in which more than 180 people were killed.
Ahead of the talks, the Indian army repeated its stance that Siachen, the world’s highest battlefield, was strategically important for the country and troops should remain in place. “If we vacate the posts on Siachen Glacier-Saltoro Ridge and Pakistanis and Chinese come to control the valley, it can threaten eastern Ladakh,” Brigadier Om Prakash of the Siachen Briage said.
Demilitarisation of the 6,300-metre (20,700-foot) glacier — proposed this year by Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf — is expected to figure in talks between India’s Shivshankar Menon and Pakistan’s Riaz Mohammad Khan. Indian wants the troop positions marked out in case Pakistan moves its soldiers in after a withdrawal deal. Islamabad fears that writing down the positions would be tacit acceptance of India’s claims to Siachen.
Indo-Pak composite dialogue process will resume with Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan arriving here tomorrow (Monday) to hold talks with his Indian counterpart Shivshankar Menon on Nov 14-15.
High Commissioner-designate to India, Shahid Malik will accompany Foreign Secretary alongwith other members of the delegation to participate in the parleys. Besides reviewing the progress on the issues including Kashmir dispute at the fag end of the third round of Composite Dialogue Process, the two sides are expected to provide shape to the joint anti-terror mechanism.
During the talks, the Siachen issues will also be discussed along with Sir creek, on which a joint survey is in the works, but not finalized, indicated Indian media reports Other members of Pak delegation include Additional Secretary (AP) Akhtar Tufail, Director General (South Asia) Jalil Abbas Jilani, spokesperson of the Foreign Office Tasneem Aslam and Director Foreign Office Raja Zaheer.
Foreign Secretary-level talks were suspended by India after Mumbai serial bomb blasts, which were scheduled to be held on July 21-22 last. The Secretary-level talks would primarily focus on the resumption of dialogue process that had stalled following the Mumbai blasts, new Indian High Commission to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal was quoted as saying.
Earlier, the Cabinet Committee on Security last week approved the approach to the forthcoming Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan. “The CCS broadly approved the approach to these talks” scheduled on November 14-15, Finance  Minister P Chidambaram told reporters after the meeting here The meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also approved the strategy to be adopted for the technical-level talks on the joint survey of Sir Creek region by the two countries.
Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had directed the Foreign Secretaries to continue talks during their interaction in Havana in September last.
They also agreed to put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations. India and Pakistan aim to revive their peace process through a new joint anti-terrorism mechanism this week, but they will do well to avoid another round of mud-slinging, analysts say.
Tuesday and Wednesday’s talks between top foreign ministry officials are the first in 10 months, and follow a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai in July that killed 186 people and sent a shockwave through the peace process.
Although trust is still in short supply, at least the two sides are talking rather than rattling sabres, analysts say.
“The very fact that talks have resumed is something in itself, that is important,” said Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, a former Indian envoy to Pakistan. “But I wouldn’t place any great expectations on the talks themselves.” India controversially blamed July’s attack on Pakistan’s military intelligence, and has promised to present evidence to back up that claim at this week’s talks.
But it also wants to work with its rival to set up a new mechanism to fight extremism. “I personally don’t place much faith on that,” added Parthasarathy. “It’s a question of political will not mechanisms.”
The peace process was launched in 2004 amid a surge of optimism, with India’s then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee appearing to share an unlikely chemistry with Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
But Vajpayee was booted out of office in elections shortly afterwards, and it wasn’t long before the momentum dissipated. “At the moment, the peace process is in something of a stalemate,” said retired Pakistani general and political analyst Talat Masood. “It surely needs another injection of life.”
Vajpayee’s successor, the soft-spoken Manmohan Singh, appears to have less control over his coalition government and over India’s traditionally hawkish establishment.
“The feeling I get is that the prime minister is very keen to move forward on this but he doesn’t know how to go about it,” said a former chief of Indian intelligence.
Musharraf, on the other hand, has often seemed to seize the initiative, offering a series of compromises to unlock their seemingly intractable dispute over Kashmir, the picturesque Himalayan territory both countries covet.
But he has failed in India’s eyes in one crucial regard. He has failed, New Delhi says, to cut Islamabad’s ties to Islamist extremists responsible for violence in Indian Kashmir and increasingly in the rest of the country. Back-channel negotiations have seen a useful exchange of ideas over Kashmir.
Pakistan now recognises India is not prepared to redraw boundaries, and both sides talk of a soft border in Kashmir to replace the heavily militarised frontline of today.
But concrete initiatives like a much-hyped bus between the capitals of divided territory have stalled in a morass of bureaucratic red tape. The bus now travels virtually empty, and the two Kashmirs are as divided as ever. Even the back-channel is undermined by the violence.
“As long as there is violence in Kashmir, as long as there are incidents like the bombings in Mumbai, no government in Delhi will have the political space to move away from established positions on Kashmir,” said Parthasarathy.
In one sense though, and in the words of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”. It was just four years ago that South Asia teetered on the brink of a conflict that set nuclear alarm bells ringing.
“Neither government can get rid of the peace process,” said Sukh Deo Muni who teaches at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. “People want it, there is no question.”—Agencies