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India, Pakistan forward proposals to avoid war

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: The Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries kick-started the third round of the composite dialogue process on Tuesday and forwarded several new proposals to avoid risks of nuclear and conventional war and also to increase people centric confidence-building measures (CBMs).

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan said South Asia should be an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) free zone. He also sought discussions on evolving mechanisms to reduce threat perceptions.

Though India has a declared “no-first use” nuclear doctrine, Pakistan feels that India has not yet made its doctrine public. “What we have heard is the draft nuclear doctrine and we don’t know the validity of the no-first use,” a senior Pakistani official said. “Though being a smaller country, Pakistan doesn’t have a non-first use doctrine,” the official added.

The logic behind calling the region an ABM free zone, the Pakistani official said, was that India was engaged with the US to enter into a national missile defence (NMD) agreement to procure missile shields to de-fang the Pakistani arsenal. In case India joined an NMD, Pakistan would be hard pressed to seek ways to counter it, he said.

During the talks, the Pakistani foreign secretary told Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran that Pakistan was ready to consider the Indian draft on reducing risks of nuclear accidents or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. He also said Pakistan was ready to work towards the formalisation a ballistic agreement.

He proposed considering the possibility of extending the agreement on the pre-notification of ballistic missiles to cruise missiles also. It was also proposed to prevent the accidental use of weapons at sea to ensure the safety of navigating vessels.

On conventional CBMs, Pakistan suggested concluding an agreement to stop permanent relocations of strike formations and forward positions.

Other CBMs proposed by Pakistan included the speedy return of prisoners and inadvertent crossers of the Line of Control (LoC). It was suggested to reduce their period of repatriation to three months from their day of arrest.

India, on the other hand, tabled two non-papers for discussion. These included an understanding on not creating new border posts and military structures along the LoC and to conduct periodic brigade command level flag meetings. India also offered to extend the Khokhropar-Munabao train service to Ajmer to facilitate Pakistani pilgrims. Indian spokesman Navtej Sarna said New Delhi also wanted to increase civil aviation flights to 24 a week and to fly to new destinations.

Asked if the Balochistan issue was brought up in the meeting, he said the Pakistani side did raise objections to India’s pronouncements on Balochistan and called them interference in the internal affairs of their country. “But, we rejected their objections,” he said, adding that it was not interference and India continued to be concerned over the situation in Balochistan.

Both sides will discuss Jammu and Kashmir today (Wednesday).

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