NEW DELHI: Top defense officials from India and Pakistan kicked off talks Monday over a disputed glacier high in the Himalayas where troops have clashed intermittently for decades. The two-day meeting in New Delhi between Indian Defense Secretary Pradeep Kumar and his Pakistani counterpart Syed Ather Ali is part of the slow-moving peace process aimed at bringing lasting stability to South Asia. India broke off all contact with Pakistan in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which were staged by the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba according to Indian and Western intelligence. An Indian defense ministry official said the two defense secretaries met behind closed doors, where they were to discuss the militarized 20,800-foot high Siachen glacier in Kashmir. India in 1984 sent troops and occupied strategic areas on the glacier, raising fears of another full-blown war between the neighbors, and three years later the two militaries fought a fierce skirmish in the region. The two armies clashed intermittently until a ceasefire in Nov. 2003, but the fierce cold and harsh conditions are thought to have cost more lives than combat – the temperature on the world's highest battlefield drops to minus 70 degrees Celsius in winter. A security analyst said the ongoing talks on Siachen, which is around 75 kilometers long and nearly five kilometers wide, may not bear fruit. “Right now, our position is that ‘you mark your ground positions on the map and give us an assurance that once we vacate (Indian posts) you will not occupy,'” retired Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta said. “Pakistan will of course not agree to that and so it will be zero outcome and we will meet once again,” the Indian analyst said, referring to 11 previous unsuccessful meetings over the icy mass. India wants “iron-clad” proof of existing Pakistani military positions to dissuade Pakistan from moving its soldiers forward in the event of troop withdrawals. Relations between the estranged neighbors, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, have improved over the last year after contacts between prime ministers and other senior government figures. But India has recently sharpened its criticism of Pakistan and its alleged state funding of militant groups in the wake of the death of Osama Bn Laden. – Agence France
