Defence secretary talks to take a shot at resolving Siachen tangle

NEW DELHI: Ever since he visited the forbidding glacial heights in June 2005, PM Manmohan Singh has been keen to convert Siachen into "a mountain of peace''. With cricket diplomacy now injecting some momentum into Indo-Pak talks, whether this enduring "vision'' can translate into reality will be tested in the coming days with the defence secretary-level talks.

It's not as if the military face-off in the world's highest, coldest and costliest battlefield is intractable. A draft agreement on the festering Siachen Glacier-Saltoro Ridge imbroglio was reached in 1989, when Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto were at the helm, and both India and Pakistan have accepted the need to demilitarize the glacial heights ever since.

The sticking point in the protracted negotiations, however, has been the "authentication'' of the 110-km Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) beyond the NJ-9842 grid reference point, where the well-delineated Line of Control simply stopped dead in the 1972 Simla Pact, right till the Karakoram Pass.

India has been consistent in pressing for ironclad guarantees for the AGPL authentication, both on the maps and the ground, because its troops occupy most of the "dominating'' posts on the Saltoro Ridge, before there is troop disengagement, withdrawal and the final demilitarization of the glacier.

This is deemed crucial because if Pakistani troops move into the positions vacated by Indian troops, it will be virtually impossible to dislodge them from there. The Indian Army has worked on the political leadership to make this
aspect "non-negotiable'' since it has occupied the "strategic'' heights at great cost.

"If Pakistan could violate the well-defined LoC during the 1999 Kargil conflict, it would be foolhardy to expect the undemarcated AGPL to be respected without concrete guarantees in place,'' a senior Army officer said.