India vowed on Thursday to push forward the fragile peace process with Pakistan, as Islamabad hailed a ceasefire between the rival armies across the rugged Kashmiri borders as a ”good beginning”.
Officials on both sides said that no violations of the ceasefire had been reported since it started at midnight on Tuesday.
India’s Foreign Minister, Yashwant Sinha, said the climate between India and Pakistan had already improved before the truce was agreed but that the lull in cross-border shelling had ”certainly improved the climate further”.
”There is no denying that fact,” Sinha said in an interview with a Hindu newspaper on Thursday.
He described the latest peace moves between the long-time rivals as ”dramatic” and said India would respond positively to ”any worthwhile suggestion” from Pakistan.
”We are interested in friendly relations with Pakistan,” the minister said. ”We would like to take this process forward in all honesty because we are interested in peace with Pakistan.”
He added: ”You can say that things have started moving. Before all this happened, there was a sense of great despair that something dramatic was not happening. Now, what can be described as dramatic has also started happening.”
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Masood Khan was equally upbeat.
”It’s a positive development, and a good beginning because both sides have agreed to the ceasefire,” Khan said of the first-ever full ceasefire, which he said was ”holding on both sides”.
”In the past President [Pervez] Musharraf would say ‘Let’s observe a ceasefire’ and the Indians would say no,” Khan said, referring to proposals by Musharraf on August 12.
”This time we took a unilateral decision and the Indians have responded positively, so it’s a good beginning.”
The ceasefire covers the disputed 760km Line of Control separating Indian- and Pakistani-ruled zones of the Himalayan border region, the 230km undisputed border and the Siachen glacier in the far north.
The rival armies skirmish almost daily over the Line of Control, shelling each other and killing dozens of civilians each year.
The ceasefire is a high point in slow-moving efforts to mend ties since Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee agreed in April to work towards dialogue called for by Pakistan. The last time the two sides talked was in July 2001.
The neighbours were on the verge of war last year following an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
The South Asian giants had already fought two wars over Kashmir, a Muslim majority region claimed by both since the subcontinent was divided in 1947 to create Pakistan for the region’s Muslims.
India has said incursions over the Line of Control by rebels fighting Indian forces in its zone of Kashmir must stop before peace moves can advance further.
But Khan said the onset of winter virtually guaranteed there would be no incursions.
”In any case there are no incursions during the winter season, the activity goes down,” the spokesperson said.
”We’re saying crossings have gone down drastically since last year.”
Both New Delhi and pro-Pakistani rebels have said there will be no truce inside Indian Kashmir, where the insurgency has raged since 1989.
Indian police on Thursday said a civilian was killed in a grenade blast in Indian Kashmir, where suspected Islamic rebels overnight killed two policemen.
Suspected militants threw a grenade at Indian troops in the Amira Kadal area of the summer capital Srinagar, which missed its target and killed a watchmaker, police said.
Twelve other civilians were injured in the blast. — Sapa-AFP