India Reopens Airspace to Pakistan

June 10, 2002
By Myra MacDonald and Bill Tarrant

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - India reopened its airspace to Pakistani overflights Monday in its first step to ease a six-month standoff over Kashmir which brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.

Despite hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough, Indian and Pakistani troops continued to exchange fire in disputed Kashmir. India's defense ministry said troops fired artillery and mortar bombs at several points along the border, including the high-altitude Siachen glacier.

The reopening of the airspace came ahead of a visit to the region by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as part of an intense U.S. diplomatic drive to avert a conflict which some feared could escalate into the world's first nuclear war. India's foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said other steps would follow if Islamabad took measures to act permanently against Pakistan-based Islamic militants whom New Delhi blames for attacks on Indian targets in Indian Kashmir and elsewhere.

"Our response to these measures will be sequenced. Today's announcement should be seen as an indication of our continued monitoring of the situation, our desire for peace, because to peace there is no alternative," she told a news conference.

Rao declined comment on media reports that India might also pull back five warships deployed on its western coast south of Pakistan and appoint an ambassador to Islamabad.

The ban on Pakistani flights over India was imposed on January 1 as part of a series of diplomatic and military measures triggered by a December 13 attack on India's parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

India also recalled its ambassador and later expelled Pakistan's ambassador to New Delhi after a May 14 raid on an Indian army camp, again blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

Pakistan welcomed India's decision to reopen its airspace, but said lot more needed to be done to ease tensions between the two neighbors.

Close to a million men have been mobilized along the border, which stretches from Kashmir in the Himalayas, south through desert plains to the Arabian Sea.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has promised to stop Islamic militants crossing into Indian Kashmir to join a revolt against Indian rule there and to curb their operations inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

He has also condemned both the attack on India's parliament and the raid on the army camp.

But India has said it will not pull back its army from the border until it is convinced the action against militants is permanent and their training camps are dismantled.

Musharraf earlier told reporters that Pakistan would study any steps taken by India, but the risk of war remained.

"As long as the forces remain deployed...the danger is not over," Musharraf said at Islamabad airport Monday before leaving for the United Arab Emirates.

Financial markets rose in both countries on hopes of a breakthrough during a double-handed U.S. peace mission which began last week with a visit to the region by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to be followed by Rumsfeld.

The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange 100-share index closed up 5.94 percent while the 30-issue Bombay Stock Exchange index ended up 1.92 percent.

India's defense ministry said eight Pakistani bunkers were destroyed in artillery firing on the 20,000-foot (6,100-meter) high Siachen glacier, described as the world's highest battlefield.

The two armies, which are in close proximity all along the line of control dividing Kashmir, also fired at each other in Kargil, Dras, Poonch and Naushera sectors in the southern part of the bitterly contested territory.

But a Pakistani official said firing between Pakistan's Punjab province and India's Jammu and Kashmir state -- scene of some of the worst fighting -- was restricted to light-arms fire, with artillery silent since Sunday.

Dozens of people, many of them civilians, have died as both armies pounded each other with artillery fire in recent weeks.

Indian newspapers said Rumsfeld was expected to visit New Delhi first Tuesday, seeking a commitment from India to take some initial steps toward reducing tensions.

He would then go to Islamabad to convince Musharraf that he in turn must crack down harder on Islamic militants.

"It is still a tense situation with respect to India and Pakistan. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of armed troops on each side that are opposing each other," Rumsfeld told a news conference Monday in Kuwait before flying to Bahrain.

"... I would not say it is continuing to escalate in terms of the risks," he added.

Indian officials have declined to say what other steps India would take itself, though Indian analysts expect these to be fairly small to start with.

Indian defense specialist C. Raja Mohan wrote in The Hindu that unlike Armitage, who went first to Islamabad, Rumsfeld would visit New Delhi first.

"If India makes some gestures toward military and diplomatic de-escalation by then, Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to press General Pervez Musharraf for additional steps on cross-border terrorism, such as dismantling the camps," he wrote.

Most analysts do not expect India to pull its army back from the border before state elections due in Kashmir in September or October, which New Delhi sees as a key step in ending a 12-year revolt against its rule there.

Many separatists oppose elections, which have been rigged in the past, and which they see as India's way of trying to legitimise its rule in the Himalayan region.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 -- two of them over Kashmir. Both conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and have ballistic missiles, prompting fears a fourth conflict could unleash nuclear war.

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