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Indo-Pak talks on nuclear CBMs and narcotics control

	December 20, 2004

After the failure of the Kashmir bus talks, India and Pakistan engaged each other once again to discuss nuclear Confidence-Building Measures [CBMs] and cooperation to combat drug trafficking. At a separate meeting in the Pakistani capital, both sides agreed to begin a joint survey of boundary pillars at Sir Creek next month. Also for the first time, back-to-back talks on CBMs on conventional weapons were held in Islamabad, where Islamabad demanded a military balance, an idea to which New Delhi was cool because its security perception is not Pak-centric. In New Delhi, at the two-day meeting between the two delegations to discuss the problem of drug trafficking in the region, they exchanged a draft MoU on steps to deal with the problem. In a separate development, after a nod by New Delhi, the Kashmiri separatist leaders belonging to the Hurriyat, travelled to the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, for a meeting with their counterparts from Pak-occupied Kashmir to exchange views on the resolution of the Kashmir problem at a conference organized by the Nobel award winner organisation for peace, International Pugwash Foundation.

The talks on nuclear CBMs ended in Islamabad on Dec. 15 with recording progress on some proposals on nuclear risk reduction. The two sides were hopeful that the hotline between the Foreign Secretaries will be oprationalised soon. A joint statement issued after two-day expert level talks said, detailed consultations were held for early operationalisation of the decisions taken at the last round of talks in New Delhi in June, especially on the upgradation of the existing hotline between the Directors General of Military Operations [DGMOs] and the establishment of a dedicated and secure hotline between the two Foreign Secretaries. The two sides agreed that the future periodic expert-level talks on nuclear CBMs would discuss, review and monitor the implementation of nuclear CBMs as called for by the Lahore MoU of 1999. They will report progress made during the talks to their respective Foreign Secretaries who are scheduled to meet in Pakistan on 27 and 28 December.

It was conceded on the sidelines of the meeting that though considerable progress was made on some of the proposals, none of the proposals could be finalized as work on them is still in progress. At the June meeting, India and Pakistan had agreed to extend a moratorium on nuclear tests and to set up a telephone hotline between the top bureaucrats in their Foreign Ministries. Besides exchanging a draft agreement on giving advance notice to each other before conducting missile tests, India and Pakistan had sought a dialogue with permanent five of the UN Security Council on issues of common concern. Officials in Islamabad had talked about the possibility of finalising the agreement on advance notice on missile tests. At the Delhi meeting, they had also promised to work towards an accord with technical parameters on pre-notification of flight testing of missiles, a draft of which was handed over by India to Pakistan. The statement said, these measures are intended to prevent any misunderstanding and reduce risks relevant to nuclear issues.

The Indian delegation was led by the Additional Secretary in the External Affairs Ministry, Ms Meera Shankar. The talks ended in an upbeat mood and talking to newsmen after the meeting, the leader of the Pakistani delegation, Tariq Osman Hyder, declared that South Asia was no longer a “nuclear flashpoint”. Diplomatic observers noted that for the first time since the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, a senior Foreign Office functionary from Pakistan has conceded that South Asia was no longer a nuclear flashpoint. Pakistan has been harping on the theme of South Asia as a nuclear flashpoint in the context of Kashmir and the Indo-Pak tension.

Back-to-back talks on conventional CBMs were also held in Islamabad where the Indian side was led by the Joint Secretary in the External Affairs Ministry, Arun Singh, while Hyder again headed the Pakistani delegation. Given the divergence of views on the nature of conventional CBMs, there was no meeting point. India reminded about nine military CBMs forwarded in June but got no response. The nine proposals of India include an agreement on peace and tranquillity on the Line of Control, envisaging a series of measures; contact between the Air Forces, Navies, Sector/Core Commanders; face-to-face meeting between the DGMOs; exchange of naval ships and interaction between the defence think-tanks. Instead of responding to these proposals, the Pakistani delegation focused on the concept of “strategic restraint regime” envisaging conventional military balance, implying the need for some kind of military parity between India and Pakistan. New Delhi’s contention is that unlike Pakistan, whose defence build-up and requirements are not country-specific, in the case of India the equation is much more complex. “It is impractical on the part of Pakistan to expect parity in conventional military strength with India. Hence at least so far there is no meeting point on conventional CBMs”, an official privy to the talks said later.

India and Pakistan have already agreed on a set of military CBMs. These include the notification of army exercises of a certain size near the border and a commitment by the two Air Forces not to violate each other’s air space. These two agreements were signed in 1991. But, there has been no real political ownership of these CBMs in either country. Neither side has been willing to underline the importance of avoiding conventional military tensions. Breaking from this dismal tradition at the last round of Foreign Secretary talks, India proposed a broad package of conventional military CBMs [nine proposals in all] that could lead to greater interaction between the two military establishments and ultimately to military peace on the international border as well as the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir. As it awaits the Pakistani response, New Delhi hopes Islamabad would move away from its rhetoric on a “strategic restraint regime” and proposals for “mutual and balanced force reduction”. Islamabad has traditionally sought to link nuclear negotiations with conventional force reduction and inject the notion of military parity between the two nations. India which faces military challenges on other borders will naturally not yield to this framework proposed by Pakistan.

Some military analysts not satisfied with the progress of conventional and non-conventional CBMs in Islamabad, say the two countries should have little difficulty in signing off a series of agreements from the well-known laundry list of nuclear CBMs. They say, at the meeting of their nuclear experts last June, India and Pakistan, indeed, got down to the business of reducing the risk of war between the two nations. They agreed to institute secure lines of communications between the two establishments. India also handed over a draft agreement on the prior notification of ballistic missile flight testing. Both are useful ideas, but not new. They were outlined in their Memorandum of Understanding signed during the then Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore in 1999. Says a military analyst, C. Raja Mohan, the world is looking at the pace of negotiations and the level of commitment to implement them. New Delhi and Islamabad should know that the willingness of the rest of the world to accept them as part of the official nuclear club depends on the ability of India and Pakistan to responsibly manage their own nuclear relations. In their last statement on the subject, the two Foreign Secretaries reiterated their self-perception as nuclear weapon powers and demanded a dialogue with other nuclear powers. If India and Pakistan want to be taken seriously, they must show results from their nuclear talks. At a time when the rules of the global nuclear game are being recast by the Bush Administration, India and Pakistan must find ways to cooperate on the nuclear issue. The two Foreign Offices should resist the usual temptation to merely score points against each other.



Talks on Sir Creek

Simultaneous with the nuclear CBMs talks, discussions were held in Islamabad on finalizing modalities for a joint survey of the boundary pillars in the disputed Sir Creek estuary, said to be rich in oil and gas deposits that divides Sindh province from India’s Gujarat State. The two countries decided to conduct a joint survey of the boundary pillars there in the first week of January.

From the Indian side, Girish Kumar, Deputy Surveyor General headed the talks while the Pakistani delegation was led by Jamil-ur Rehman Afridi, Surveyor General of Pakistan.

Demarcation of the Sir Creek boundary has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan for several decades. Eight rounds of talks held so far have not helped resolve the differences. The history of the issue dates back to 1914 when an agreement was signed between the then Government of Sindh and Rao Maharaj of Kutch. According to the agreement, both sides agreed to a boundary line running through the middle of the Creek as a border between the two States. The final demarcation was completed in 1925 in which the boundary was shown by a Green Line depicted on the eastern side of the creek. One side of the Creek is under Pakistan’s control whereas there are naval installations of India on the other side. Pakistan claims that all the 17 Creeks of the Sindh coast belong to it while India maintains that almost half of the area of the Sir Creek – the 17th one – belongs to it.



MoU to check drug trafficking

Sharing their concern over drug trafficking, narcotics control officials of India and Pakistan at the end of their talks in New Delhi exchanged a draft Memorandum of Understanding [MoU] on steps to be undertaken to deal with the problem. A joint statement issued at the end of the two-day talks on Dec. 14 said, both sides agreed to provide support and cooperate with each other to curb illegal trafficking of drugs, psychotropics and precursor chemicals. The two sides discussed ways of enhancing bilateral cooperation in exchange of information and operational intelligence, the statement said.

The five-member Pakistani delegation was led by its Anti-Narcotics Force Director General, Nadeem Ahmed, while the Indian team was led by the Director General of the Narcotics Control Bureau [NCB], Swaraj Puri. The two sides discussed methods for mutual detection of narcotics drugs and ways to control their smuggling. An Indian delegation from the NCB had visited Pakistan in June this year for the first round of talks to check smuggling of narcotics drugs which, in this region, originate mainly from Afghanistan. It is conceded that a major problem is the continuing production of heroin in Afghanistan. Pakistan says chemicals needed for processing heroin are smuggled in from India. The issue was discussed at the last meeting in June. According to the leader of the Pakistani delegation, Maj.Gen. Nadeem Ahmed, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan covered an unparallel 131,000 hectares this year. The reports are backed up by statistics. In 2003, 260 tonnes of heroin – a derivative of opium – were produced. This year, the figure has gone up to 420 tonnes, confirming the warnings of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Sources say the Indian officials had asked the Pakistani side at the deliberations how poppy cultivation could increase in Afghanistan despite the heavy presence of US troops. Nadeem Ahmed is said to have told them that US troops had argued that if they interfered with opium cultivation, villagers and local drug lords would stop providing them information on Taliban and Al-Qaeda activists.

Pakistan has been a major route for Afghan drug traffickers. The Pakistani official apprised the Indian side of the impact the growing supply from Afghanistan was having on his country. According to the ANF chief, 60 of the 360 tonnes of heroin produced in Afghanistan was intercepted in neighbouring countries and another 40 tonnes consumed by drug abusers in Pakistan and its neighbourhood. The remaining unaccounted 260 tonnes of heroin is believed to have made its way to Europe and the US.



Visits to promote Indo-Pak amity

The hostility that has strained the relations between India and Pakistan for over 50 years did not seem to exist at the people’s level on both sides. Interaction among people of both nations during joint cultural programmes and seminars is helping build mutual understanding and confidence. The impression was drawn from the visit of Pakistanis to Karnal in Haryana where a team of journalists and artists from Pakistan under the command of Fakhar Zaman took part in a three-day seminar on “India Pakistan Relations : Emerging Cooperation” sponsored by the World Punjabi Conference. Later, a team of eight Pakistani journalists was taken on a study tour of Parliament House. The group of young journalists sat through proceedings in the Lok Sabha Press Gallery.



More meetings planned: Several issues pending

Several more high-level visits and meetings have been planned for the near future to safeguard the process and ensure that it is not derailed. The Foreign Secretaries will meet in December. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf will meet in Dhaka in January on the sidelines of the SAARC summit while Foreign Minister, Natwar Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, will meet in Islamabad in February. There are several areas which the two sides can be expected to focus on – differences over the type of travel documents to be used on the proposed Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, the inability of the two sides to implement a June 2004 agreement to reopen consulates in Karachi and Mumbai and the delay in commencing the Khokhrapar-Munabao rail links. The Minister of State for External Affairs informed the Lok Sabha on Dec. 15 that while talks have been held on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, differences continue to persist, including on the issue of documents to be used for travel on this route. New Delhi is determined not to allow travel without passports while Islamabad is equally adamant that passports cannot be used for Kashmiris to travel across the Line of Control. It is unlikely that either government will be able to move out of the parameters of these positions. Interestingly, the people on both sides, judging from reports in the media, are veering around to a soft border option with more autonomy for the two Kashmirs. Political observers say, this is , of course, a first step for Pakistan and a solution for India and it will be important for both governments to bridge this significant gap before they rush into any solutions for Jammu and Kashmir. On the Munabao-Khokhrapar rail route, despite India’s desire to open it as quickly as possible, technical difficulties are delaying the service. During the last meeting between the two official delegations in Islamabad, both the governments agreed in principle to have another train service between the two neighbours. While India proposed opening this second train route by October next year, officials of the Pak Railways expressed their inability to start this service within the next 11 months on technical grounds. Pak officials are quoted as saying it would take at least two years to overcome technical difficulties. The technical difficulties that the officials are talking about relate to the use of meter gauge tracks by Pakistan till Khokhrapar whereas India has broad gauge tracks right up to Munabao, the last Indian station close to the international border.

Earlier, India’s demand for transit rights to Afghanistan and Iran through Pakistan was one of the issues raised during the recent visit of Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to India. If Pakistan agrees, it will amount to reopening the Silk Route, resulting in enormous economic gains to not only India but also Pakistan and the other countries of the region. Besides increasing the volume of trade, the use of land route is bound to bring down the cost of goods and services considerably.

India is believed to be trying to link the transit rights issue to the Iranian gas pipeline project passing through Pakistan. New Delhi’s viewpoint is that it will be easier for New Delhi to join the pipeline project, benefiting both India and Pakistan considerably, provided it is allowed by Islamabad to transport Indian goods to Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics through the land route. Pakistan may have similar advantages for trading with Bangladesh, using Indian roads. This will be another major confidence-building measure contributing to the success of the ongoing peace process. Pakistan’s reluctance in this regard is based on the assumption that transit rights to India will help in increasing New Delhi’s clout in Kabul, something too bitter to be swallowed by Islamabad. India cannot be denied the advantages it has under the prevailing circumstances.



Kathmandu meeting of Kashmiri separatists

Perhaps for the first time, leaders from the two Kashmirs came face to face in Kathmandu to kickstart an intra-Kashmir dialogue. A consensus statement issued after the three-day meeting of the Kashmiri leaders, intellectuals and former bureaucrats as part of Track II diplomacy said on Dec. 14, the process of peace should be carried forward to seek an honourable and feasible solution to the Kashmir problem in a peaceful war. But, at the same time, they called for triangular talks that will involve the Kashmiris at some stage in the Indo-Pak peace process. They supported the India-Pak dialogue process, expressing the view that peace could come back to Kashmir only through negotiations. There were, of course, elements which talked of separatist ideas, but they agreed with the majority viewpoint that there was need for promoting the confidence-building exercise initiated by India and Pakistan. It seems realization has dawned on the Kashmiris of all shades and persuasions that the path of violence including that of terrorism will take them nowhere. It has made the life of people more miserable on both sides of the divide. As demanded by Hurriyat leaders Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Abdul Ghani Bhat, the Kathmandu Initiative will continue with more such meetings in the coming months.

It was not just a gathering of nearly 60 thinking individuals including Kashmiri separatists who exchanged their views on the festering problem. Organised by the International Pugwash Foundation, which won the 1965 Nobel Prize for Peace, the Kathmandu conference had the tacit support of India and Pakistan as both had sent their official observers. This means the outcome of the initiative may influence their future moves. The meeting provided an occasion to the Kashmiris on both sides of the LoC to interact among themselves for the first time on a question that concerns them more than anybody else.