- ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI
(Reuters) - Pakistan said on Thursday it would withdraw troops from the
border with India to peacetime locations, in response to a similar gesture
from its South Asian rival.
-
- As tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours eased,
India said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee might also visit Pakistan
early next year -- if a regional summit went ahead as planned.
-
- But both sides said the withdrawal of troops would not
apply to a tense ceasefire line in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir,
where the two armies continued to shell and snipe at each other almost
on a daily basis.
-
- New Delhi continued to rule out direct talks with the
Pakistan government over Kashmir, which has soured relations between them
since independence and almost brought them to a fourth war in June.
-
- After holding state assembly elections in Indian Jammu
and Kashmir in September and October, India announced on Wednesday it was
ready to begin the phased withdrawal of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers
from the border.
-
- The brief Pakistani response came after a meeting chaired
by President Pervez Musharraf.
-
- "The government of Pakistan has decided to withdraw
its forces from the Pakistan-India border to their peace-time locations,"
a statement from the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said. "The pull back
will commence shortly."
-
- The move signalled an end to the longest and biggest
deployment of troops in the region since independence, but left the rival
countries still poles apart over Kashmir.
-
- "Frankly what we need is not the withdrawal of troops,
although that is part of de-escalation, but the solution of the core issue,
and that means a dialogue on Kashmir," Pakistani presidential spokesman
Major-General Rashid Qureshi told Reuters.
-
- India says Pakistan sends Muslim militants across the
front line into Kashmir, and India refuses to talk until that stops.
-
- "What's needed to start any dialogue with Pakistan
is a complete and visible end to the sponsorship of cross-border terrorism
and we have seen no change in that," a foreign ministry spokesman
said in New Delhi.
-
- CONFLICTING SIGNALS
-
- In this atmosphere of gradual detente, India sent conflicting
signals on Thursday on whether Vajpayee would visit Pakistan to attend
a South Asian summit due in the third week of January.
-
- Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha cast
doubt on whether the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit
would go ahead as planned, but said Vajpayee would attend if it did.
-
- "I have said...that if we don't make progress on
SAARC issues, there is no point in holding a summit," he said.
-
- Sinha's junior minister, Digvijay Singh, earlier told
television Vajpayee would attend the talks in what would be his first visit
to Pakistan since 1999.
-
- Both ministers stressed the visit, if it went ahead,
would focus on SAARC and not on Kashmir. "SAARC is a multilateral
forum and there is no scope for bilateral talks," Singh said.
-
- India's reluctance to talk is partly a reflection of
its deep distrust of Pakistan's powerful military, analysts say.
-
- But it is also a reflection of the fact that it controls
the key valley at the heart of Kashmir, and would prefer an internal solution
to the 13-year insurgency in the mainly Muslim region.
-
- New Delhi argues that the recent state election in Jammu
and Kashmir, where it claims a turnout of more than 40 percent, vindicates
its rule there and was a vote against the insurgents.
-
- An election in Pakistan last week will bring a civilian
prime minister to power for the first time since a 1999 military coup by
General Musharraf. But it has not loosened the army's influence over foreign
policy, institutionalised through a National Security Council headed by
Musharraf himself.
-
- If talks did take place -- and there will be significant
international pressure for dialogue -- few expect a breakthrough.
-
- "Talks between India and Pakistan are more posturing
than anything else, because once they get to the table the two sides will
see that they do not have much to discuss," said Pakistani political
commentator Ayaz Amir. "Their positions are so hard and there is very
little they can do to each other."
-
- HAND SHAKES
-
- Nevertheless, Vajpayee's visit would be the first time
a leader of either country has visited their neighbour since Musharraf
came to India for a failed bilateral summit in 2001.
-
- The two men did shake hands briefly in Nepal in January
at this year's summit of SAARC, which also includes Bangladesh, Bhutan,
the Maldives and Sri Lanka, but held no bilateral talks.
-
- Indian army officers said some of the hundreds of thousands
of battle-ready troops could start pulling back from the 3,310-km border
as early as Thursday.
-
- But there will be no reduction in Kashmir, where both
sides exchanged heavy but sporadic artillery and mortar fire overnight
on the Siachen glacier, the word's highest battlefield.
-
- Military experts say the partial withdrawal would take
weeks and front line officers have said it would take months to clear mines
from farm fields along the border.
-
- Troops were thrilled at the announcement, just before
the Diwali holiday in early November and after a harsh winter and scorching
summer dug in along the frontier.
-
- "The soldiers in the bunkers are particularly happy.
People had forgotten them all through the long summer," one senior
officer on the front line in Punjab said.
-
- India and Pakistan massed a million men along their border
running from Kashmir through the Punjab plains down to deserts on the Arabian
Sea after a December attack on India's parliament that New Delhi blamed
on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.
-
- "Definitely there are chances of a fresh flare-up
of tension if there is a bad terrorist attack," said former Indian
admiral Raja Menon. "I feel Musharraf is not fully in control of these
militants but he lacks the courage to say so."
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly
prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited
|
