ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: India is forcing Pakistan also to resort to conditional talks and it may happen if New Delhi continues to link future talks with the successful outcome of the air links and overflight negotiations scheduled to be held on Dec 1 and 2, sources said.

Sources told Dawn on Saturday that a debate was going on in the official quarters that Pakistan should put a condition of end to repression in the held Kashmir if India kept insisting on linkages. It was being contemplated that India could be asked to drastically reduce its over 700,000 military troops in the occupied territory if it continued to focus on softer issues only, they said.

They said although Pakistan had accepted most of the confidence-building measures proposed by India, Islamabad felt that New Delhi was forcing it to make any further talks conditional.

The issue has reportedly been discussed this week between President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and they rejected the linkages on the overflights issue. They agreed that Pakistan was being forced to think of putting its own conditions.

Nevertheless, sources said, the president and the prime minister were of the view that Pakistan at this stage should do nothing to derail the process or even give the impression that it was not interested in talks.

In their view, Pakistan should go ahead with air links talks with an open mind and a determination to resolve the issue, and not respond to India’s delaying tactics in the same coin.

Sources said that this time the United States had come up with a “very strong plea” for the reduction of tension in the region through a meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan. “US Secretary of State Colin Powel has asked the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India to get engaged in fresh deliberations with a positive mind and ensure that these deliberations are not chocked off,” said a source. He said Mr Powel’s concern was that both sides should avoid a breakdown in the talks. “Mr Powel pleads for nascent engagements,” he said.

Sources said the government had taken into confidence the Bush administration about Pakistan’s three dimensional proposal to address the issue of alleged cross-border infiltration. The proposals cover a ceasefire on the Line of Control, Islamabad’s readiness to use its influence among the Kashmiri leaders to end violence in occupied Kashmir and general cessation of violence through United Nations Military Observers Group.

They said the government had told the Americans that Pakistan wanted to have a ‘composite’ dialogue with India. “We have reiterated our proposal extended to India in 1998 to ensure peace and security in South Asia by signing a nuclear restraint regime, also called the strategic restraint regime,” a source said and expressed the hope that the US would take up the issue with the Indian government.

Sources said senior US officials had been told that India wanted to remove the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir from talks and was only interested in discussing issues pertaining to sports, transport and people-to-people contact.

The purpose of the people-to-people contact, sources alleged, was to influence public opinion here in favour of New Delhi’s position on the disputed territory.