The Hindu : `Good neighbours should emulate Bhutan'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 08, 2004

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`Good neighbours should emulate Bhutan'

By R.K. Radhakrishnan

CHENNAI JAN. 7. The Chief of Army Staff, N.C. Vij, today said that it was up to the "good neighbours" to follow the example set by Bhutan in cracking down on terrorists.

"Once the Royal Government of Bhutan has done this, all our good neighbours will take the cue... I only said that all our good neighbours should respond," he said, when asked if there could be positive responses from Pakistan and Bangladesh. He was talking to presspersons after the rollout ceremony of the T-90 S tank `Bhishma' at the Heavy Vehicles Factory, Avadi, near here.

On the Indian involvement in the Royal Bhutan Army's operations against anti-India militants, he said the Army was giving protection to the Bhutanese convoys inside India and was treating its injured soldiers. "All that is as per the prior understanding."

"We are involved in the sense that we have sealed off the borders," he said and added that the Army had already picked up over 160 persons who had tried to sneak across the border in the past 15 days and handed them over to the appropriate authorities. "We have a major involvement. But inside Bhutan, it is only the RBA and the Royal Bhutan Guard," he said.

There will be no force reduction along the International Border, the Line of Control, or the Siachen Glacier, consequent to the newfound bonhomie between India and Pakistan, he said. "It (the talks between Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the Pakistan Prime Minister, Zafarullah Khan Jamali, and President, Pervez Musharraf) is only a beginning. So let us see how it goes," he said. The first meeting between the two sides was only slated for February. "My job is to make sure that I check the infiltration and I would much rather concentrate on that."

He said there was no proof to indicate that insurgency had gone down in the Kashmir Valley. "In winter months, in any case, the infiltration drops because humanly it is not possible to infiltrate. We have also put in place the fence, [have the benefit of] satellite imagery and thermal imagers. These are a big boon in detecting infiltrators. So this is not the right time to give an assessment on infiltration," he said. "We will have to see over a period of time. We should not link these two things [the talks and infiltration]."

The Army wanted its troops to be relieved of counter-insurgency duties and wanted to speed up the process of raising the specialist Rashtriya Rifles force to counter terrorism.

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