The Pakistani naval surveillance aircraft shot down on Tuesday by India, killing all 16 people aboard, came down in a disputed border creek area rich in oil deposits, fish and other natural resources that is muddying claims by both sides of a territorial violation, writes Rahul Bedi.
Pakistan's French-built Atlantique 1 aircraft was intercepted by Indian fighters and downed in the 60 km-long marshy Sir Creek estuary flowing into the Arabian Sea on the border between the two countries in the Rann of Kutch region.
Though the disagreement over Sir Creek dates back to independence in 1947, it is nowhere as bitter the one over northern Kashmir state, but it is nearly as complex. Like other disagreements between the two nuclear-capable enemies who nearly went to war for a fourth time since independence in May following a border conflict in Kashmir, it is one over which the two arch rivals are unwilling to compromise.
The Sir Creek dispute also results in fishermen from either country being arrested by the other side for operating in "foreign waters". India wants the boundary of the oil-rich Sir Creek area to be drawn straight down the middle of the estuary which separates the eastern Pakistani province of Sindh from the western Indian state of Gujarat.
Pakistan favours a demarcation line closer to the eastern shore of the creek which, when extended into the sea, would give it a greater chunk of the continental shelf abounding in natural resources.
Both countries refer to a map attached to a 1914 resolution between Sindh and what was then the princely state of Kutch to resolve the dispute. The problem they face is that Sir Creek is a shifting tidal channel, whose physical limits have significantly changed since the map was drawn.
Talks aimed at resolving the issue were held in New Delhi last November, but failed to make any headway because of the two different ways of defining the region's boundaries.
Failure to resolve the Sir Creek dispute has prevented India and Pakistan submitting their claims under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea on the limits of their respective continental shelves and exploiting the wealth that lies therein. This has to be done by 2004 or the two sides must submit to UN mediation.
India also has a dispute with neighbouring Bangladesh dating back to the time it was East Pakistan. Both lay claim to New Moore/South Talpatty island and to the oil-rich delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers which flow into the Bay of Bengal.