- New Delhi, Sep 8 (IANS) India is willing to convert the
military ceasefire line that divides Jammu and Kashmir into a permanent
border if Pakistan agrees to certain conditions, a media report said Sunday.
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- The 742-km Line of Control (LoC) could be made the border
if Pakistan did not claim or demand any more land in Kashmir after the
agreement and stopped supporting "proxy war and terrorism" in
India, The Times of India quoted unnamed sources in the government as saying.
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- Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's "government
has softened its earlier stand and is agreeable to accepting the LoC as
the international border provided certain conditions are met with by Pakistan,"
the report said.
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- The sources said Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf
was "not yet ready to accept this proposal".
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- The U.S., however, is "putting pressure on Musharraf
to mention the proposal" in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly
next week.
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- "It is believed that Pakistan is unlikely to accept
the proposal without demanding its pound of flesh from the deal, which
could come in the form of sops for Kashmir," the report said.
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- A "step-by-step strategy has been chalked out"
to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan, it said.
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- As the first phase, the Indian high commissioner would
return to Islamabad.
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- In the second phase, if polls to the Jammu and Kashmir
assembly in September-October passed off peacefully, "non-official
level bilateral talks" would begin.
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- Armies of both countries would withdraw from the border
simultaneously in the third phase and a "bilateral decision to turn
the LoC into the international border" would be announced in the final
phase.
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- The reported move to convert the LoC into a permanent
frontier first emerged in a report in the Pakistani daily The News, which
reported on September 1 that the proposal was the cornerstone of a policy
signalling a "crucial shift" in Islamabad's stand on the Kashmir
issue.
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- The News had said Musharraf would discuss this policy
with U.S. President George W. Bush.
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- If India agreed to the proposal, it would also have to
give up its claim to parts of Kashmir currently occupied by Pakistan. Islamabad,
for its part, would tell Kashmiri separatist groups that upcoming elections
to the state assembly were an "internal issue" of India.
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- The Times of India report said the proposal was discussed
by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw with Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister
L.K. Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandes during their visits to
the region.
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- India's cabinet committee on security had "discussed
the proposal at length" and most of its members had endorsed it as
"realistic".
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- Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, a long-time
advocate of the proposal, too has expressed his support, the report said.
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- The Indian government told Powell and Straw that New
Delhi could "accept this proposal provided Pakistan accepts it and
is willing to fulfil India's demands of giving up any further claims to
Kashmir and putting an end to the proxy war against India.
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- "Once the agreement is signed the border will be
properly demarcated and delineated," The Times of India said.
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- Though the Pakistani and Indian governments had officially
denied earlier reports about turning the LoC into a border, The Times quoted
diplomatic sources as saying that "secretly a lot of headway is being
made on this issue".
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