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Siachen, J&K non-negotiable | July India - Pak Talks | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, July 1: Only a few days ago, Indian and Pakistani Defence Secretaries met at Rawalpindi to discuss ways and means leading to the demilitarization of the strategic Siachen glacier region which is legitimately Indian and which is being defended to the hilt by the Indian Army since 1984. It is Pakistan, especially its Army, which had been insisting on talks over Siachen with a view to ensuring its demilitarization so that it could establish its stranglehold over the glacier and jeopardize the Indian interests. Both the Defence Secretaries met but reached no agreement. It was expected. The Indian Defence Secretary stuck to the stated position, with the nation heaving a sigh of relief. The talks on Siachen glacier region were followed by talks between the two countries on Sir Creek. The talks took place in New Delhi. Nothing came out of the much-hyped talks. India again stuck to its stated position. Pakistani delegation went back to Islamabad empty-handed. Indian Foreign Secretary and his Pakistani counterpart are scheduled to meet on July 4 and 5 in New Delhi to discuss peace and security in the region, Jammu and Kashmir, confidence-building measures and other bilateral issues. One can without any hesitation say that nothing would emerge out of the impending talks. In fact, two developments have already created more distrust between New Delhi and Islamabad with Islamabad once again establishing that it represents a rogue, failed and discredited state and that it will be dangerous to trust this Islamic state. One was the Pakistani U-turn in the case of Sarabjit Singh, who has been languishing in a Lahore jail for more than 22 years now. First the Pakistani state commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment and informed the entire world that Sarabjit Singh would be released very soon. And, within 8 hours, Islamabad under pressure from the army, terrorist and fundamentalist organizations reversed its decision and announced that it was not Sarabjit Singh but Surjit Singh who would be released. Pakistan stood exposed in the eyes of the international community. It lost whatever credibility it still had. The Pakistani U-turn culminated in a pall of gloom in India in general and the native village of Sarabjit Singh in particular. The other was the arrest of Syed Jabi-ud-Din Ansari, who was one of the six terrorists who monitored and directed the 26/11 terrorist attack on the financial capital of India, Mumbai. Ansari, alias Abu Jundal alias Abu Hamza, has made many startling revelations, including the revelation that Lashkar chief and terrorists like Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhavi and any Army major and one senior ISI official were in the Karachi control room from where he, along with others, monitored and directed the Mumbai attack, which left as many as 166 innocent persons dead and hundreds of others injured, some of them very fatally. He has also revealed that their target was not just Mumbai but to replicate in India what the terrorists had done on 9/11 in the United States. The India Foreign Office has described the Abu's arrest as "very important for India" and Union Home Minister has directly accused Pakistan of causing 26/11. Chidambaram has, in addition, asked Islamabad to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice. As expected, Islamabad pooh-poohed the Abu's confessions and said no state actor was involved in the 26/11 terror attack. It is in this backdrop that the Indian Foreign Secretary and his Pakistani counterpart would meet in New Delhi. It is obvious that the impending talks are destined to fail. An additional factor that would further vitiate the atmosphere on the eve of talks is the scheduled meeting between Pakistan Foreign Secretary and Kashmiri militants like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on July 3 - meeting arranged at the behest of Pakistan Foreign Secretary. Even otherwise, the possibility of any agreement with Pakistan is too remote, as Jammu and Kashmir and Siachen are non-negotiable. |
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