New Delhi, November 25
India and Pakistan today took a historic decision of agreeing to observe a ceasefire with effect from midnight tonight along the international border, the Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) in Jammu and Kashmir.
Top government sources told The Tribune that India had made it abundantly clear to Pakistan that the ceasefire was between the two armies and Indian troops would continue to shoot at terrorists trying to
infiltrate from Pakistan.
This is the first time when a formal bilateral ceasefire has been agreed between India and Pakistan during peacetime.
The decision was clinched by the Directors-General of Military Operations of India and Pakistan in the course of their weekly conversation today after the two governments had given the go-ahead. The Ministry of External Affairs spokesman read out the one-paragraph statement to reporters.
It was India’s Additional DGMO, Maj-Gen A.S. Bahiya, who spoke to the Pakistani DGMO, Maj-Gen Yusuf Mohammad, as the DGMO, Lt-Gen B.S. Takhar, was out of town. The Indo-Pak DGMOs talk on hotline to each other every Tuesday.
The Indian government took a prompt decision after Pakistan Prime Minister Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali’s offer on November 23 of a ceasefire along the LoC and expanded the scope of the ceasefire by including the AGPL also, which Pakistan claimed was meant to be covered in Mr Jamali’s offer.
Today’s decision of further expanding the scope of the ceasefire also includes the international border, which extends the ceasefire to India-Pakistan border in Punjab and Rajasthan-Gujarat sectors as well.
The decision to get the ceasefire offer announced by Prime Minister Jamali is a tactical move aimed at India as well as the West as this way it increases the offer’s acceptability. India would have treated with suspicion any such offer had it come from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf as New Delhi regards General Musharraf as the chief architect of Kargil. In fact, recently General Musharraf had made a ceasefire proposal, which New Delhi was quick to debunk.
Diplomatic sources cited three reasons for Islamabad to make its ceasefire at this point of time. One, Pakistan realised that the hostile reaction of its Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar to India’s 12-point peace offer of October 22 was unwarranted and had diplomatically harmed the country before the international community.
Secondly, the Pakistani offer was a compulsion of domestic politics for General Musharraf who, of late, has been feeling the heat from the jehadis. The increased targeting of Saudi Arabia and Turkey by Islamic terrorists has put General Musharraf in a tight spot internationally. Lowering temperature with India could help Pakistani cause at this juncture.
Thirdly, since smoking the peace pipe with India could divert international and domestic attention for General Musharraf, it was only in the fitness of things to improve Indo-Pak relations that can pave the way for Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to attend the upcoming SAARC summit in Islamabad from January 4 to 6.
The Pakistanis seemed to be succeeding in preparing a conducive atmosphere for Mr Vajpayee’s Islamabad visit as the indications are that preparations have already started in the Government of India in this regard and various ministries, departments and agencies have already started working on briefing points and papers.
However, the Government of India is still tenuous about General Musharraf’s real intentions and the all-pervasive view in the Indian establishment is that General Musharraf cannot dismount the tiger of terrorism that he willingly mounted years ago.
A clear signal of this, according to diplomatic sources, is available by the Pakistani Government’s recent decisions of banning six “transmuted” terrorist
outfits.
