Soften control in the Line of Control: India on talks eve

Meanwhile, highly placed sources here said India was ready and willing to transform the Line of Control into a ‘‘softer kind of line,’’ which ‘‘bridges, instead of divides’’ the people of Kashmir who live on either side.

Singh is likely to have also used the same line with Powell. New Delhi has been saying for some time that although it doesn’t recognise the LoC as an International Boundary — in fact, it officially refuses to recognise Kashmir as a ‘‘dispute,’’ preferring to term it an ‘‘issue’’ — it believes the negative consequences of this dividing line can be overcome with time if both countries allow cross-LoC traffic to take place.

One way, both sides agree, is the proposal to start a cross-LoC bus from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad. Delhi’s official line is that ‘‘passports and visas’’ for bus passengers be the best travel documents, a position with which Islamabad disagrees—it insists on UN papers.

Clearly too much is at stake at the India-Pak ministerial — and on its eve a one-day review of the first complete round of the composite dialogue in six years between Foreign Secretaries Shyam Saran and Riaz Khokhar — and Powell, by the act of making the telephone call this evening to Singh, let it be known that the international community would be watching the proceeds.

Under the circumstances, the Singh-Kasuri meeting takes on the character of a tentative testing of waters. Both will look to see how far the other is prepared to go on both the territorial issue of Kashmir as well as the plethora of 72 confidence-building measures that have been proposed over the last eight rounds by New Delhi. Islamabad could propose a few of its own.

The government will reiterate its view that people’s confidence built through these CBMs will impact on a discussion of Kashmir. ‘‘The two things go hand in hand,’’ the sources said.

Besides New Delhi was ‘‘ready to address the complex issue of Kashmir’’ which has considerable emotional charge for both sides in a serious and sustained manner.

New Delh is likely to argue that Kashmir is not even a ‘‘dispute,’’ and that the entire state of Jammu & Kashmir, including Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, is an integral part of India as reaffirmed by a 1994 Parliamentary resolution. For a start, the Indian side is likely to ask Pakistan what it means by its constant reiteration of the fact that Kashmir is ‘‘disputed’’ territory, and what ideas it has towards its ‘‘resolution.’’