Pakistan urges India to move on Siachen glacier

BELGIUM: The chief of Pakistan's armed forces said India had to move to solve the stand-off over the North Kashmir Siachen glacier, a day after Pakistan suggested a possible interim solution.

The Siachen glacier is the world's highest battlefield, where thousands of troops are holed up in freezing temperatures and more soldiers have died due to weather than to fighting.

India has refused to withdraw its troops from the glacier until Pakistan accepts the positions held by the two sides in the icy, barren region.

"It's for the Indians to do something, they are in adverse occupation of that area, we don't have to do anything," General Ehsan Ul-Haq, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee, told Reuters during a trip to Brussels, when asked what Pakistan could do to build up the confidence to solve the stand-off.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Riaz Mohammad Khan said after the first peace talks in nearly a year with his Indian counterpart on Wednesday that Islamabad was willing to accommodate India's position but on the condition that it would not be a final endorsement of India's claim over the glacier.

Analysts said that was an apparent interim solution to the dispute over the Siachen glacier. Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said on Wednesday there were still differences over Siachen and more talks were needed.

Kashmir saw an increase in guerrilla violence this week, coinciding with the resumption of the peace talks.

Ul-Haq said there was no infiltration by Jihadis in Kashmir. "The Indians themselves are acknowledging that," he said.

Commenting on a military air strike on a religious school in Pakistan's Bajaur region last month, Ul-Haq warned that the military would "neutralise" any militant target.

The attack on the religious school or madrasa run by a pro-Taliban commander in Chenagai on Oct. 30 killed some 80 suspected militants in the region bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan, a major U.S. ally, had been trying to persuade militant tribesmen to agree to peace terms.

"An important element of this agreement is that there should be no militant activity or military training activity in that area," Ul-Haq said.

"(It) has been highlighted all along by the government that if there is any such target then ... the government would not hesitate to neutralise the target," he added.

Ul-Haq said the military was working both on controlling the borders and ensuring the safety of Pakistani territory, after a peace deal agreed in Sept. with tribal leaders in Waziristan, another region on the Afghan border.

BRUSSELS, Friday, Reuters