ISLAMABAD, June 12: Pakistan has asked the international community, especially the Americans, for some iron-clad guarantees that India will not use the pretext of one or the other locally inspired Jihadi activity linked to the ongoing freedom struggle inside occupied Kashmir to commit some adventurism on the LoC at some future date.

According to informed sources, now that Pakistan has taken all the measures as required by the international community to guarantee a permanent end to the cross-LoC movement, Islamabad expects the latter to reciprocate by guaranteeing that India will not misuse the military capability it has already built up along the LoC by blaming Pakistan for the deteriorating law and order situation related to the ongoing indigenous Kashmiri freedom struggle.

These sources said that US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who was here last week, was thoroughly briefed on this aspect of the problem and he was reportedly in complete agreement with Pakistan’s assessment of the situation. The deputy secretary is said to have accepted Pakistan’s position that it was humanly impossible to hermetically seal the LoC.

Mr Armitage was also told that an Indian adventurism on the LoC could be averted and Pakistan would feel reciprocated as well for effecting unilaterally an unpopular but drastic shift of national significance in its approach towards the Kashmir dispute like accepting in its entirety the UN Resolution 1373 under Chapter 7, if India were to immediately reduce its troops on the LoC to peace-time levels and resume dialogue on Kashmir and other issues.

In order to preempt an Indian adventurism on the LoC, Pakistan has already requested for a third-party monitoring of the LoC and it has also welcomed the proposals by the United States and the United Kingdom in this regard, including their offer to provide facilities and equipment for airborne monitoring.

However, India is said to have refused to allow any third- party monitoring on its side of the LoC and instead has proposed joint patrolling by both Indian and Pakistani troops. This was the same proposal, sources said, that India had presented in 1972 and which Pakistan had then rejected on the grounds that the soldiers instead of monitoring the LoC would be monitoring each other and would perhaps even shoot each other.

Pakistan reportedly does not feel all that impressed by the so-called confidence-building measures India has taken so far ostensibly to de-escalate the tension in South Asia in response to Pakistan’s assurance not to allow, as far as it is humanly possible, people crossing from this side of the LoC to the Indian side.

On the other hand, Islamabad appears rather highly apprehensive of the current situation inside the occupied territory, especially a significant increase in the atrocities of the Indian paramilitary forces against the unarmed Kashmiris, the killing of Abdul Gani Lone, arrest of Ali Shah Geelani and the earlier arrest of Yaseen Malik.

“Now only three leaders of the Hurriyat are left in the field. It appears the Indians are using the cover of the clouds of war on the South Asian skies to completely silence the voice of dissent inside the occupied territory and then hold elections there in September-October without, of course, letting foreign monitors and observers to monitor the elections,” said informed sources.

If they succeeded in this, these sources added, then they would tell the world that ‘look that was all there was to the Kashmir issue and now that the elections have been held and a new government installed the issue has disappeared for all intents and purposes’.

The sources said that the world appears to have persuaded itself to agree with India that elections would be the first step towards resolution of the problem and that was why, they added, Pakistan was being asked by its powerful friends to let the Indians hold the elections and after that these friends believe a dialogue between the two could be held on how best to resolve the bilateral dispute, but which the Indians would then claim did not exist at all.

Pakistan, therefore, is said to have decided to draw the attention of the international community to the real Indian designs in occupied Kashmir by referring to the fact that in the first place in the eyes of the world Kashmir is still a ‘dispute’ between two neighbours. Secondly, an election in Kashmir cannot be regarded as a substitute for plebiscite as the dispute was not about a territory but about the people of the territory.

“As long as the Indians do not tackle the real causes of the Kashmir crisis, the wound would continue to fester and continue to force the two neighbours again and again towards war- like situation endangering frequently not only the peace of the region but also the world,” the sources maintained.