NEW DELHI: There are signs of a growing rapprochement between two of Asia's nuclear powers who have been threatening each other over disputed territory in Kashmir.
India responded positively yesterday to rival Pakistan's offer of a unilateral ceasefire on the line of control that divides Kashmir between them. It proposed extending a similar arrangement along the 20,000-feet high Siachen glacier to the north, across which the adversaries engage almost daily in artillery duels.
But foreign office spokesman Mr Navtej Sarna predicated India's response on Pakistan stopping Muslim militants from crossing into Kashmir and thus fuelling the regions 14-year-long civil war for a Muslim homeland.Pakistan denies India's allegations of "sponsoring" the Kashmiri insurgency, claiming to provide it with only diplomatic, moral and political support.
On Sunday Pakistan's Prime Minister Mr Zafarullah Khan Jamali said he would order his troops to stop firing on Indian positions along the 466-mile long line of control from Wednesday. This is the day the Muslim holy festival of Eid al-Fitr begins, marking the end of the month-long fasting period of Ramadan.
"We can change the atmosphere of confrontation with strong political determination," Mr Jamali said in a nationwide televised address, adding that steps such as the ceasefire would help restore mutual confidence to peacefully resolve the 56-year-old dispute.
Since independence in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars and an 11-month-long military engagement over Kashmir.
"We will respond positively to this initiative," an official statement said in New Delhi, but did not elaborate. It also suggested extending the halt in hostilities to the Siachen Glacier, the world's highest battle-field where hundreds of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have died in cross-border fire and from exposure to freezing winter temperatures.
"The tit-for-tat ceasefire moves by India and Pakistan are nothing but atmospherics," said Pakistan specialist Prof Satish Kumar. They are geared to the international community and come at a time when cross-border movement across snow-bound mountain passes at Siachen has ceased.
India and Pakistan who came close to war last year and have been engaged in half-hearted peace moves, are under US pressure to ease tension and begin peace talks.
"Washington desperately wants to defuse the India-Pakistan standoff over Kashmir that threatened last year to escalate into a nuclear exchange," said a senior military officer. Consequently, India's Hindu nationalist-led coalition government has also agreed to hold talks with Kashmir's main separatist alliance after Eid and Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is travelling to Islamabad to attend a regional South Asian summit in January.
And in Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar, separatists and ordinary residents hailed Pakistan's ceasefire announcement, saying it could lead to peace. "It is a very good thing that has happened," said separatist leader Mr Shabir Shah.
The Siachen dispute, meanwhile, dates back to the 1949 Karachi Agreement following the first war over Kashmir two years after independence. The agreement decreed that the ceasefire line ended at Khor high up in the Himalayas, leaving about 47 miles of the Siachen glacial area unmarked and unclaimed.
The 1972 Shimla Agreement that ended the third India-Pakistan war also failed to take Siachen into account. Mutual suspicion thereafter led to both sides sending military expeditions to Siachen and in 1983 Pakistan claimed the area for itself and began moving troops to establish control.