Sensors offer Indo-Pakistani border solution

By PETER POPHAM in NEW DELHI

United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld struggled to nudge along the nascent Indo-Pakistani peace process yesterday in a full day of meetings with top Indian leaders.

And he offered a high-tech answer to the conundrum that has baffled all would-be peacemakers so far: how to check the infiltration of terrorists across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir without involving foreign troops who would internationalise an issue that India insists must be solved bilaterally.

Rumsfeld suggested the deployment of technologically advanced ground sensors along the Line of Control to detect movements across it.

Before the deployment began, surveillance experts from the United States, Britain, India and Pakistan would meet to thrash out procedures for using them to track infiltration.

The idea of deploying an international force equipped with helicopters along the Line of Control was apparently first proposed by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during his visit to the region last month, though that has been officially denied.

At the weekend, America's Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, dismissed the idea as "far-fetched" - but it clearly continues to be a possibility.

When Rumsfeld was asked after his meeting with Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes yesterday whether the issue had been discussed, he said: "The honest answer is, yes, that subject did come up."

India's hawkish Home Minister, Lal Krishna Advani, said this week that he would be happy to see foreign monitors deployed as long as they were confined to the Pakistani side.

But the consensus within the Indian Government appears to be against the idea.

The preferred solution was floated by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at a security conference in Kazakhstan when he threw out the idea of joint Indo-Pakistani patrols.

Rumsfeld's idea of using sensors and having international surveillance experts set the ground rules would seem to go some way to addressing the glaring problem with joint Indo-Pakistani patrols: the fact that the two sides profoundly distrust each other.

There was no immediate response from the Indian side to the Rumsfeld idea.

But Fernandes said: "The discussions we had and the understandings reached bring their fruit and it will help us in creating a better atmosphere in the subcontinent."

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Feature: The Kashmir conflict