The Hindu : National : Decline in infiltration across border cause for happiness

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 10, 2004

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National

Decline in infiltration across border cause for happiness

By Amit Baruah

NEW DELHI, NOV. 9. It is not going to be put out in an official press statement, but the Government of India is quietly happy that infiltration from Pakistani-controlled territory into Jammu and Kashmir has come down.

Officially, the Government line is that the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, must honour "in letter and in spirit" the commitment he made on January 6 to prevent the use of his country's territory by terrorist elements.

In fact, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, who came under "fire" from the Bharatiya Janata Party by referring to the "spirit" and not the "letter" of the January 6 agreement in New York this September, underlined both "letter and spirit" at a recent international conclave in the capital.

New Delhi has made it clear that the dialogue process could move ahead if Gen. Musharraf kept his promise on curtailing terrorist activities. The joint press statement issued on January 6 read, "President Musharraf reassured [then] Prime Minister [A.B.] Vajpayee that he will not permit any territory under Pakistan's control to be used to support terrorism in any manner."

However, the Government of India will not say anything on record for obvious reasons. Aware that dramatic terrorist attacks by Pakistani nationals or those using Pakistani territory were very much in the realm of the possible, New Delhi would like to maintain the pressure on Islamabad on this issue.

Whether it is the Ministry of External Affairs or the diverse security establishment in the country, there is a grudging concession that Pakistan is, however, showing some signs of cooperation in dealing with the terrorists operating from the other side of the Line of Control (LoC).

A senior official dealing with security affairs told this correspondent: "The evidence on the ground shows that Pakistan is cooperating. Whether such cooperation is long-term or episodic remains to be seen."

Bus service

Coming out openly in favour of the trans-LoC bus service from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad, he maintained that India and Pakistan could hammer out a via media to deal with the contentious issue of travel documents to be carried by passengers.

Some South Block officials believe that the November 2003 ceasefire has been key to the lowering of infiltration levels. According to these officials, the nearly year-long quiet along the frontier had allowed the Government to fence large chunks of the LoC. "Only a small section remains to be fenced," they said.

They claimed that the Army's operating capabilities had significantly improved along the LoC. "There is some deployment even ahead of the fencing," the officials said, adding that the use of thermal imagers had also improved detection of infiltrators.

Such a situation has opened up several possibilities as far as bilateral relations are concerned. Interestingly, the officials took the view that the Government's recent proposals relating to improving people-to-people contacts should not be simply seen as confidence-building measures.

"Our proposals should not be considered as CBMs alone. We see them as part of the building blocks for a final solution to the contentious issue of Jammu & Kashmir," the officials said.

This relatively positive assessment of the role being played by Islamabad is likely to improve the atmospherics ahead of the visit by the Pakistan Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, to New Delhi later this month.

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