Clinton and Sharif depart Blair House following a meeting concerning the tensions between Pakistan and India MESSAGE BOARD: India-Pakistan relations

July 5, 1999
Web posted at: 4:27 a.m. EDT (0827 GMT)

From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pakistani guerrillas that have crossed into the Indian portion of Kashmir will be withdrawn under an agreement reached Sunday by U.S. President Bill Clinton and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a senior U.S. official said.

The agreement, if carried out, could defuse a conflict that has been described as the worst crisis between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan in nearly 30 years.

Clinton and Sharif met for nearly three hours Sunday to discuss the volatile situation in Kashmir, the disputed area between the two countries, and agreed that it was "vital for the peace in South Asia that the Line of Control be respected by both parties."

The line was set up in 1972 under a cease-fire agreement between the two countries.

Clinton and Sharif also agreed, according to the statement, that the fighting in the Kargil region of Kashmir "contains the seeds of a wider conflict."

India claims Pakistani troops have occupied several peaks in its territory, crossing the 1972 cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between the two neighbors. Pakistan says they are Indian militants fighting New Delhi.

National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley said Sharif called Clinton on Saturday to discuss the recent hostilities in Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan territory that has been the flashpoint for two Indo-Pakistani wars. Sharif requested a face-to-face meeting with Clinton, Crowley said.

Sharif's Indian counterpart, Atal Behari Vajpayee, declined an invitation to come to Washington on such short notice.

The White House said Clinton had spoken to Vajpayee for about 10 minutes on Sunday to brief him on the talks.

The statement said Clinton stressed that the best way for the two countries to settle their differences, including Kashmir, was to continue the direct talks that began when their prime ministers met in Lahore in February.

A Muslim militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir on Monday warned Sharif of "damaging consequences" if his actions hurt the "cause of Kashmir."

The Harakatul Mujahideen group said the U.S.-Pakistan agreement designed to end the conflict with India would have no impact on the battlefield in India's northern Kashmir.

"No (Pakistani) government has ever survived if its actions are damaging to the cause of Kashmir. Nawaz Sharif's fate would not be different if he chooses to intervene in our affairs," Harakat's chief Fazalur Rehman Khalil told Reuters by telephone from Islamabad.

Harakat is one of four groups which say they have been fighting intense battles with Indian troops in Indian Kashmir's northern Kargil-Drass sector for the past about two months, and its camps in Afghanistan were among targets of a U.S. missile attack last year against suspected hideouts of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

"Politically speaking it will have no impact," Khalil said of the Sharif-Clinton agreement. "Pakistan was never there and whathever it says the guns are in our hands," Khalil said.

With Indian control over a crucial Kashmir highway almost complete, the army has begun diverting troops and weapons into Batalik, one of the most difficult battlegrounds where Pakistan-based fighters are fighting Indian soldiers.

The army said between 250 and 300 fighters occupied the ridgelines in Batalik, an area high in the Himalayas between the Indus River that flows from India into Pakistan and the cold desert region of the Ladakh plateau.

"I hope it is the final push," said Col. Avtar Singh, the military commander in the Batalik sector.

India says Pakistani soldiers are directing Islamic militants who want to separate Muslim-majority Kashmir from India.

Pakistan acknowledges its forces are trading nearly constant artillery shelling with the Indians across the 1972 cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between the two countries. Islamabad, however, says its troops have not crossed the frontier.

India has described the capture of Tiger Hill as a turning point in the border war with its neighbor

On the battlefront, Indian soldiers celebrated the capture of one of their biggest trophies so far in the two-month conflict -- the 16,500-foot high Tiger Hill overlooking National Highway 1, a target of Islamic fighters entrenched for months on neighboring mountaintops. The highway is the only link between Srinagar, Kashmir's capital, and the remote battleground.

Indian troops shifted the battle against the guerrillas to four jagged ridgelines in Batalik, near the cease-fire line.

The battleground is located close to the icy wasteland of Siachen, where peaks reach 20,000 feet, temperatures fall as low as 122 degrees below zero and blizzards swirl up icy 200 mph winds.

"The enemy is not occupying any great area, but the terrain is certainly more difficult than the other two sectors," Singh said.

"The heights are more, much more jagged and extremely difficult."

Singh said the army had confirmed the deaths of 150 guerrillas over eight weeks in Batalik, and the bodies had been buried in the area.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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