Kayani on India

Pakistan army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has underlined the need for resolving all disputes, including Siachen, with New Delhi and said his country believes in “the doctrine of peaceful co-existence with its neighbours, especially India’’. Kayani said Siachen"consumes a mammoth amount of national exchequer that must be diverted to the people of the two countries’’ while speaking to reporters after surveying rescue operations in Gayari near Siachen, where over 100 soldiers remained buried after a avalanche slammed into Pakistan’s highest battalion headquarters there on April 7. He accompanied president Asif Ali Zardari to the site. “The military standoff in the frozen high mountains of Siachen not only threatens the environment but is also an enormous burden on the taxpayers of both the neighbours,’’ the general said. His comments come days after the leader of the largest opposition party — PML (N) — Nawaz Sharif called on Islamabad to take the lead in withdrawing troops from the world’s highest battlefield, where more soldiers die due to inhospitable weather than in battle. Kayani said Pakistan was forced to deploy troops in Siachen after the Indian deployments there in 1984. “The world knows why we sent our troops to Siachen. It was India which deployed its troops at the Glacier in 1984. We only mounted a natural tactical response,’’ he said. “We are only manning the border on this frigid outpost in the line of duty. We will pay whatever cost we have to for the defence of Pakistan.’’