Talks on Kashmir Turn Toward Peace

Amid signs of a military stalemate, the first hints emerged Wednesday of a peaceful end to weeks-long fighting between India and Pakistan in the disputed region of Kashmir.

In secret talks with Indian leaders last weekend, a Pakistani envoy said he had floated the possibility of withdrawing Pakistani-backed troops and guerrillas from Indian territory.

Niaz Naik, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary, said he discussed the “timing and methodology” of a Pakistani withdrawal with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. He said he hoped that Vajpayee and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would quickly seal a deal.

“I think things will start moving,” Naik told the BBC World Service radio from Pakistan on Tuesday. “I’m sure in the next couple of days this process will start.”

Details of the talks were not released, but they appeared to be part of a larger diplomatic effort to break the military impasse. While Pakistani officials publicly distanced themselves from Naik’s mission, Indian officials confirmed the visit and a recent trip by one of their diplomats to Pakistan.

Western diplomats said Naik’s visit offered the most hopeful sign yet of a peaceful end to the military confrontation along the two countries’ disputed border in the Himalayas.

The Pakistani mission seemed aimed at heading off an escalation of the fighting, which began in early May when hundreds of Pakistani-backed troops and guerrillas crossed the border into India and seized positions along a mountain highway.

In recent days, Indian military and political leaders have expressed frustration at the slow pace of their efforts to oust the intruders. The Pakistani-backed troops have seized positions at altitudes of 15,000 feet, and Indian military leaders worry that they will not be able to evict the intruders before the snows begin in late August.

Last week, Vajpayee said his patience over the intrusions was “reaching the threshold.” He sent a letter to President Clinton suggesting that India might strike across the border if Pakistan did not pull back--though Indian officials have said they’re willing to give diplomacy a chance.

Even as the diplomatic activity heated up, there were signs that the danger along the border was growing. A Western military analyst based in New Delhi said Indian military leaders were considering strikes against Pakistani supply lines and artillery batteries across the border. He said India had massed 40,000 troops near the fighting.

In Pakistan, military officials accused India of preparing for a major offensive across the border. They said Indian warplanes had violated Pakistani airspace five times in the past two days.

Indian officials acknowledged Wednesday that after nearly two months of fighting, their efforts had so far failed to reduce the total number of Pakistani-backed forces operating inside Indian territory.

Col. Bikram Singh, an Indian military spokesman, said the number of Pakistani-backed troops occupying Indian territory stood at 700 to 900. The Pakistani army was freely resupplying the forces with men and materiel.

In recent days, Indian soldiers have recaptured several peaks and claim to have pushed the intruders in places to within a mile of the border. But Singh said the terrain is hampering the efforts.

Western leaders fear that the fighting could spin out of control and ignite a wider war between the two nations, which tested nuclear weapons last year. The Western leaders have urged the Pakistanis to pull the troops out of India, and the Indians to refrain from launching attacks across the border.

Pakistani officials acknowledge that their troops are involved in the fighting but they insist that they have not crossed the disputed border, known as the Line of Control. Earlier this week, a U.S. official in Washington accused the Pakistanis of playing an “intimate, central role” in the operation.

“There are Pakistani regular forces involved . . . probably in the high hundreds,” the official said. “It’s very substantial.”

India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir since 1947, when the two countries gained independence from the British Empire and split the region between them. Pakistan has supported an armed insurgency inside the Indian-held portion of Kashmir for the past decade.

It is still not clear who in the Pakistani leadership decided to support the current incursion--or why. Western diplomats and Indian commentators have speculated that hard-line army officers ordered the operation to scuttle any rapprochement between civilian leaders of the two countries.

“Their objective is to pressure the international community to get involved, to settle the dispute over Kashmir,” a U.S. official said. “Where they misjudged is [that] we’re not going to play that game.”

U.S. diplomats say they have received hopeful signs that the Pakistanis might pull out their troops. According to two senior U.S. officials, Pakistani leaders have privately said they would be willing to withdraw forces if they could do so in a way that wouldn’t embarrass the government.

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Times staff writers Norman Kempster, Bob Drogin and Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.