Rense.com



India Willing To Turn LoC
Into Formal Border - Report

By Indo-Asian News Service
9-8-2

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
The sources said Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was "not yet ready to accept this proposal".
 
The U.S., however, is "putting pressure on Musharraf to mention the proposal" in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly next week.
 
"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.
 
A "step-by-step strategy has been chalked out" to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan, it said.
 
As the first phase, the Indian high commissioner would return to Islamabad.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
The News had said Musharraf would discuss this policy with U.S. President George W. Bush.
 
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.
 
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.
 
India's cabinet committee on security had "discussed the proposal at length" and most of its members had endorsed it as "realistic".
 
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, a long-time advocate of the proposal, too has expressed his support, the report said.
 
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.
 
"Once the agreement is signed the border will be properly demarcated and delineated," The Times of India said.
 
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".
 
 
 
Copyright © 2001 IANS India Private Limited. All rights Reserved.





MainPage
http://www.rense.com


This Site Served by TheHostPros