A jawan in Siachen. File picture

Islamabad/New Delhi, Sept. 17: Pakistan today protested against India’s plans to open the Siachen glacier to adventure tourists, saying this could set the peace process back.

“The Indian deputy high commissioner was summoned to the foreign office to express Pakistan’s concern over New Delhi’s new move to open up the disputed territory for tourism purposes,” foreign office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said in Islamabad. “It’s like turning the whole (peace) process on its head.”

Delhi, however, has turned the other cheek by pledging to carry on with the peace process and enhance people-to-people contact, and announcing dates for a series of composite dialogue engagements.

The Indian Army plans to take up to 20 people on a three-week trek to the glacier, where the rival forces have faced off since 1984 across the world’s highest battlefield.

Army sources said Pakistan’s objection was irrelevant since the territory was India’s. The 16,000-foot Kumar Post, the tourists’ likely destination, is one of the Indian Army’s highest posts. The Pakistan Army is not on the glacier.

The departure of the first batch of tourists, mostly NCC volunteers, is likely to be delayed. The tourists were to meet in Leh on September 19 for an orientation course with glacier experts.

“The meeting in Leh will take place over the next few days,” an army source said. “This is purely because of administrative reasons.”

Aslam said the two countries were discussing Siachen within the framework of the composite dialogue, and its final status was yet to be agreed.

“The area remains a conflict zone and the reported move by India… can aggravate the situation with serious consequences that may also vitiate the atmosphere for the ongoing peace process.”

India, however, announced a meeting on “conventional confidence-building measures’’ on October 18, the exact day Benazir Bhutto has chosen to return to Pakistan. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why all the meetings are taking place in Delhi.

Nuclear confidence-building measures will be taken up the next day and the second round of the anti-terrorism mechanism on October 22.

Pakistan and India have held 11 rounds of talks to resolve the 22-year-old Siachen dispute, one of eight issues on the composite dialogue’s agenda.

India occupied the heights of the Saltoro Ridge that flanks the glacier to the west and north in 1984 in an action named “Operation Meghdoot”. In official files, the operation is still continuing for the army and the air force despite the ceasefire since 2002 that has by and large held true.

The two sides have lost more soldiers to altitude sickness and the cold than to hostile fire.