Love thy neighbour… Don’t love thy neighbour

India and its borders are layered with tenuous and complex relationships. Will it all change in 2007?

Sonia Shukla Delhi

After decades of hard bargaining with its smaller neighbours, India has an uphill task in resolving its border disputes. Gazing into the new year, however, the process of building peace with its neighbours holds some promise. The most promising, ironically, seems to be the one that has endured the longest: the dispute with Pakistan. For the first time there is evidence of some imagination in negotiations and the usual planned rounds of talks could prove to be less than mundane.

Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee is likely to visit Islamabad on January 13 to invite Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for the SAARC summit in New Delhi in April 2007—a visit that will provide an occasion for summit-level discussions on the peace process. The two foreign secretaries will meet in February, in Islamabad, to launch the fourth round of the ‘composite dialogue’. This could be followed by a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Islamabad in the first half of 2007.

This follows the meeting between Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and his Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Mohammad Khan, in New Delhi on November 14-15, 2006, to resume talks that had been placed on hold after the July 11 Mumbai blasts. The foreign secretaries reviewed the third round of the composite dialogue, which includes talks on eight subjects: confidence-building measures, Jammu and Kashmir, Siachen, Wullar Barrage/Tulbal Navigation Project, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial cooperation, and promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields.

On the Siachen dispute (Pakistan brought a reworded proposal to accommodate India’s non-negotiable demand for authentication of troop positions of both sides), Pakistan says it is willing to authenticate troop positions provided that would not in any way endorse any Indian claims on the status of that area. However, it did not elaborate on how exactly troop positions would be authenticated and there is skepticism in Delhi whether Islamabad would be willing to mark troops’ positions on a map: a bottom-line Indian demand. Highly placed sources say gaps still remain between the two sides and an early solution is unlikely.

The Sir Creek dispute has moved a step closer to resolution. Delhi and Islamabad agreed to hold a meeting of experts on December 22-23, 2006, to decide on the coordinates for jointly surveying Sir Creek and the adjoining areas. The experts would conduct discussions on the maritime boundary. The joint survey is to be completed by February this year.

Meanwhile, Musharraf has sent out another trial balloon through an interview. Referring to the joint Indo-Pakistani administrative mechanism for J&K, he substituted his earlier calls for "self-rule" with the terms "autonomy", "self-governance" and "joint management" of J&K with "joint supervision". These new formulations bring Pakistan closer to India’s position. High-level sources believe these proposals have been raised by Musharraf through the media to allow him to gauge reactions within the Pakistani establishment.

The government of India has been guarded in its response. But the political parties in Kashmir, including the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the National Conference (NC) and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), have welcomed the proposals.