E-Paper
India, Pak DGMOs to meet over border issue
The director generals of military operations (DGMO) of India and Pakistan will meet at the Wagah border near Amritsar tomorrow to discuss ways to restore calm along the line of control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir.
The director generals of military operations (DGMO) of India and Pakistan will meet at the Wagah border near Amritsar on Tuesday to discuss ways to restore calm along the line of control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir.
A senior army officer said India would ask Pakistan to ensure that the existing border mechanisms were meticulously implemented so there were no ceasefire violations or infiltration attempts by terrorists.
The much-awaited meeting comes at a time when bilateral ties have been strained due to rising tensions along the LoC, with Pakistan violating the November 2003 ceasefire close to 250 times this year.
Recent weeks, however, have been quite in terms of infiltration attempts due to snow in the forward areas.
The two DGMOs haven’t met in 14 years. They last met in 1999 after the Kargil war.
The Indian DGMO, Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia, had last week accepted a proposal made by his Pakistani counter Major General Amir Riaz to meet on the Pakistani side of the Wagah border.
The DGMOs will meet less than a month after General Raheel Sharif replaced Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as Pakistan’s new army chief.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif had discussed the possibility of the two DGMOs holding talks when they met in New York in September.
The two PMs had met at a time when the Pakistani Army, under Kayani, was backing one of the biggest infiltration bids in the Keran sector of Kupwara district, raising questions about Islamabad’s intentions to ease tensions along the LoC.
