AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
New Delhi: India's army chief Thursday ruled out any immediate troop withdrawals from a disputed Himalayan glacier as part of ongoing talks with arch-rival Pakistan.
“We should not call it demilitarisation as it is a process and the first step will be disengagement and the next will be demilitarisation, but it is not immediately on the horizon as we see,” Indian Army Chief J.J. Singh told a news conference.
The statement came as Islamabad continue to discuss the withdrawal of troops from the Siachen glacier — dubbed the world's highest battlefield where Indian forces currently hold strategically superior positions.
The two countries are scheduled to hold talks next month on Siachen that India's national security adviser said must produce “iron-clad guarantees” to be successful.
Siachen has been “on the anvil for a long time. As far as Siachen is concerned, the issue has been as to how do you authenticate the line where they (troops) are,” National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan told Press Trust of India an interview published Thursday.
But any change in troop levels on the Siachen glacier would depend on the outcome of the ongoing talks between the two nuclear-armed rivals, Singh said, adding that the army opposes any quick troop withdrawal but instead wants a step-by-step reduction.
“We have conveyed our concerns and views to the (Indian) government,” the general said.
India and Pakistan resumed talks in February 2004 on eight nagging issues including Siachen, where the two fought a bloody battle in 1987, three years after India occupied strategic peaks.
Military experts estimate a 7,000-strong Indian military and 4,000 Pakistani troops are stationed on the 6,300-metre (20,700-foot) icy wasteland in divided Kashmir. Cold claims more lives than actual combat on the glacier.
South Asian neighbours India and Pakistan, who carried out tit-for-tat nuclear weapons tests in May 1998, have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their 1947 independence from the British.
