India, Pakistan in glacier peace talks

11 Jun 2012, 8:09 pm   -   Source: AAP

India and Pakistan are continuing their attempt to make peace in an area known as the world's highest battlefield.

Indian and Pakistani defence officials have held a fresh round of talks to end decades of dispute over the Siachen Glacier, dubbed the world's highest battlefield.

The talks between the most senior civil servants at India and Pakistan's defence ministries were being held on Monday at the Pakistani ministry in Rawalpindi.

An avalanche on April 7 killed 140 people at a Pakistani army camp saw Pakistan's army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, call for a negotiated end to the stalemate and say that the glacier should be demilitarised.

But India, which captured the commanding peaks in 1984, sees the glacier as vital to monitor Pakistani positions below and important for the defence of its part of Kashmir, where a separatist insurgency has killed tens of thousands since 1989.

Pakistani troops have tried but failed to seize control of the sliver of territory, where sub-zero temperatures and high altitude have caused countless deaths.

India's Defence Minister AK Antony has warned against any breakthrough, saying that India would explain its "clear-cut position" on Siachen to the Pakistanis.

"Do not expect any dramatic announcement or decision on an issue which is very important for us, especially in the context of national security," he said last week.

Twelve previous rounds of talks between the nuclear-armed rivals on Siachen have all ended in stalemate.

Pakistani officials were also tight-lipped about the talks.

"The two sides will discuss Siachen and other matters related to defence affairs," Sohail Aftab, a spokesman for the defence ministry, told AFP.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided by a heavily militarised Line of Control and which both countries claim in full.

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