India offers Pakistan a face-saving way forward

It was nicely timed. Two days of ritualistic denunciations and stony stares had given Kazakhstan's first shot at a regional security conference a doomed look. Then, on the final morning – after studiously avoiding even a handshake with Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf – the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, pulled a rabbit out of the hat.

It was a modest proposal for a way to monitor infiltration across Kashmir's Line of Control. "Joint patrolling can be held by India and Pakistan," he told the final press conference. "We want to move from a path of confrontation to a path of co-operation. Once infiltration stops, terrorist camps are dismantled across the border and verification is done, we can consider other steps that will take us towards de-escalation."

This was the first positive idea India has floated for reducing tensions that have led the two nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink of war. Islamic radicals cross from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir into the Indian-controlled part of the state under cover of Pakistani army fire and with the help of Pakistani military intelligence. India has amassed 750,000 troops on the 1,800-mile-long border and has threatened war unless Pakistan ends the infiltrations.

Publicly, Pakistan denies giving practical support to the infiltrators, though privately it has recently conceded that such support exists. Under enormous pressure from the West, General Musharraf has claimed that "nothing is happening across the Line of Control". And this week, for the first time in the present crisis, India privately agreed that infiltration had recently dwindled.

But the challenge from the Indian point of view is to stop it permanently, and to reach common agreement that it has in fact stopped. Only then, India insists, can de-escalation begin and talks with Pakistan – on the future of Kashmir as well as other issues – recommence.

But who is to say the infiltration has truly ceased? This was the teaser to which Mr Vajpayee's proposal was addressed. The obvious people to monitor what is or is not happening across the LoC are the foreign army officers assigned to the United Nations military observers' group for India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), who have been stationed on both sides of the LoC since 1949 for exactly that purpose.

But in 1971, with the Simla Accord, India and Pakistan agreed to settle their differences over Kashmir bilaterally, and since then India has refused to allow UNMOGIP to perform meaningful monitoring. For the same reason – an allergy to the internationalisation of the Kashmir issue – Mr Vajpayee said yesterday: "It is not practical to allow a third country to see whether infiltration is taking place, and it is also not needed."

Pakistan's initial reaction to Vajpayee's initiative was cool and guarded. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said: "The proposal is not new. Given the state of Indo-Pakistani relations, mechanisms for joint patrolling are unlikely to work."

Pakistan's minister of information, Nisar Memon, said: "This idea can be tabled during a dialogue. We will be happy to discuss with India all issues, including suggestions that they may have to reduce tensions and resolve disputes."

Tonight the US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, flew to Islamabad, and Mr Vajpayee's initiative will figure in discussions with General Musharraf. Mr Armitage, who is due to fly to Delhi today, can be expected to deliver robust messages in both capitals.

There is plenty for the world at large, and for the US in particular, to talk about: Pakistan's massive mobilisation on its eastern border has pulled troops from al-Qa'ida hunting duties in the west. The US and the UK have made clear that they are greatly alarmed by wild talk by Pakistan about a possible nuclear response to an Indian attack. Delhi has forsworn first use of nuclear weapons, and in Kazakhstan Mr Vajpayee rebuked General Musharraf for not doing the same.