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Srinagar: India's million-plus military Friday cautioned the government against extending concessions to Pakistan on a strategic glacier in disputed Kashmir. “I am sure that security concerns will be kept in mind when any such decisions are arrived at by the government,” Indian army chief General J.J. Singh told reporters in the Kashmir summer capital Srinagar.
The warning came in the run-up to the resumption of bilateral talks, which were put on ice after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for a spate of bombings on trains in July that killed 186 people and left 800 others injured in Mumbai.
“The government has been conveyed our views and we hope that the dialogue which is going to take place between the foreign secretaries (of India and Pakistan) will tell us what lies in the future,” he said.
India and Pakistan opened 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 that a 7,000-strong Indian military and 4,000 Pakistani troops are stationed on the 6,300 metre (20,700 feet) icy wasteland in divided Kashmir, where the bitter cold and high altitude claim more lives than actual combat.
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.
