The Chicken And Egg

For a long time now there has been speculation whether India and Pakistan aremoving towards some kind of a resolution on Siachen, an issue on which the twosides have been locked in a frosty and deadly battle since the eighties.Informal assessments say that it is costing India about three crores rupees perday. And this is just to keep the supplies going to Siachen. This does notinclude the deaths, most of which is due more to the harsh conditions thanbullets. Ever since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Musharrafearmarked the Siachen and the Sir Creek issues for priority attention, thespeculation has grown about what kind of a solution might be possible. When thePrime Minister reached New York last month, all sorts of movement on the issuewere predicted.

Nothing of the sort happened in New York. If anything, New York set India-Pakprocess back a few notches. Mainly because President Musharraf, heavilypre-occupied with his dalliance with Israel and making his pitch to the AmericanJews, in addition to the US, decided to mention Kashmir and the UN resolutionsin his general assembly address. This took some of the wind out of the bilateralsail. The general apparently also gave a detailed presentation of how Indiansshould conduct their Kashmir affairs, especially in terms of withdrawing troopsfrom certain sectors in Kashmir. The Prime Minister had to tell the general off,and the warmth in the atmosphere was less due to the congenial atmosphere andmore due to the heat generated by their "frank and candid" discussions.

If there is one thing External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh’s trip toIslamabad and Karachi demonstrated, it is that New Delhi is not going to let thegeneral’s unusual approach to managing bilateral disagreement dictate the paceof relations. In addition to the composite dialogue format, we now have a JointCommission that goes over some of the areas the composite dialogue also goesthrough. This has some advantages. The first increases the points of engagementby introducing new subjects of bilateral discussions not envisaged in thecomposite dialogue format. Second, it increases the frequency of meetings at thehigher levels which might help speed up the pace of the overall engagement:Under the composite dialogue format, the cycle of engagement lasts typically sixmonths and a review is done after the cycle. Thus there is a six month wait fora particular subject to be taken forward, in case there are hitches. The JointCommission mechanism introduces a new point of benign intervention to get thingsmoving.

But what of Siachen? Yesterday the Pakistani foreign secretary hinted thatthings were now so poised on the issue that the third round of compositedialogue could address fruitfully. The next afternoon, the Indian side let it beknown that discussions were going on for "a framework on which to promote thesettlement through a mutually acceptable solution." This is easier said thandone.

The joint statement that was issued at the end of Natwar Singh’s Islamabadleg said :"The two sides exchanged ideas on the Siachen issue andagreed to continue their discussions so as to arrive at a common understandingbefore commencement of the next round of Composite dialogue in January nextyear." That doesn’t give it too much time for this to happen: about threemonths.

If India and Pakistan have to withdraw troops from their current positions,India would first want Pakistan to endorse the positions they now occupy in theglacier, given Pakistan’s aggression in Kargil. Pakistan is not about to "endorseIndia’s aggression of Siachen" by doing this. It is the chicken and eggstory. So the sequencing of a possible solution presents problems. Now what hasbeen decided is to work out a package in terms of a framework which wouldmitigate the political difficulties each side would have in accepting somereasonable and doable solution. Can this be done?

There are at least six clusters of issues on Siachen that needs to beaddressed:

• The first pertains to the area which will be vacated by the troops.
• The second has to do with how to work out where the troops will re-deploy.
• The third has to deal with how to define an area of disengagement.
• The fourth has to do with how to work out a regime to keep that area of disengagement demilitarized.
• The fifth has to do with how to verify that the regime is working to mutual satisfaction.
• And lastly, how to define a boundary beyond point NJ 9842?

Can a framework understanding be arrived on all these issues in three months?If that happens, then all of us will know that the bilateral track is proceedingbetter than we expected