India to keep heavy weapons in J&K

Islamabad: India on Thursday rejected a Pakistani proposal to remove all heavy weapons from Kashmir, a Pakistani official said.

However, the two sides agreed they would not set up new military posts along the frontier. Senior officials of the two countries held talks in Islamabad on Thursday on confidence-building measures in their conventional weaponry, as part of a peace process to end hostility.

Tariq Usman Haider, head of the Pakistan delegation, said Pakistan proposed moving all heavy weapons above 120mm caliber from Jammu and Kashmir. India did not accept, saying it was its sovereign right to decide where to deploy its forces, he said.

"We have made a very serious and sincere proposal to reduce the threat along the Line of Control, and that is redeployment as a measure of reducing (the) threat, redeployment by both sides of artillery, guns, rockets and mortars above 120mm," he said.

"The Indian side was not ready to accept this," he said.

At an earlier joint news conference, Dilip Sinha, chief of the Indian delegation, was asked about Pakistan's hope for demilitarization in Kashmir, and he stressed that deployment of troops was India's "sovereign" decision.

"We have made our position quite clear that the deployment of force in any part of India is the sovereign right of the country and it is taken in conjunction with the security situation," Sinha said.

Thursday's talks follow two days of discussions over nuclear-confidence-building measures. Haider said that at the talks on nuclear confidence-building, the two sides exchanged four drafts for an agreement aimed at preventing any unauthorized or accidental use of nuclear weapons.

He criticised a deal US President George W. Bush signed with India last month that provides New Delhi with civilian nuclear technology.

"We have made it plain, our feeling is that this is not a positive development in terms of strategic stability," Haider said. "We will certainly maintain our credible deterrent, whatever developments may take place across our border."