Pakistan is more than keen on making progress on the Siachen issue in the wake of recent tragedy that stuck its army camp on the glacier but on its terms to set the ball rolling on Sir Creek, which opens up to the Arabian Sea. Well, that approach was a hurdle. And the Sir Creek talks were doomed to fail from the word go.

The Rao – Farrokh talks covered the land boundary in the Sir Creek area and also delimitation of International Maritime Boundary between India and Pakistan. ‘They reiterated their desire to find an amicable solution to the Sir Creek issue through sustained and result-oriented dialogue’, said a joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, which was eclipsed by L’affaire Gilani – dismissal of Prime Minister Gilani by the Supreme Court as a part of its crusade against corruption.

Probably, things could have been different if the very same apex court of Pakistan waged a ‘jihad’ against terrorism that is championed with impunity from the very soil of the country. .

Frankly, the dialogue with Pakistan is fast becoming a proforma exercise – meetings taking place just because they had been agreed upon at the highest level. The dialogue on Sir Creek opened in 1969; so far nine rounds of talks took place without a breakthrough.

Talks for talks sake will never succeed. The negotiators need a clear brief but in the prevailing situation in Pakistan, it will be too much to expect a paradigm shift in Pakistan’s policy particularly on terrorism, which is undoubtedly the thorny issue in the bilateral ties.    In the light of what David Hadley had said to his interrogators in the United States and what Hafeez Saeed, the chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba keeps saying from his Lahore perch, it is difficult to buy Pakistan’s contention that it is doing its best to rein in state and non-state actors for whom bread and butter is terrorism..  
 
Locally called ‘Baan Ganga’, Sir Creek has little military value since it is a marshy land but holds immense economic value as its sea bed is believed to be rich in oil and gas.  The area gets flooded during the monsoon.

The bone of contention between India and Pakistan is whether the actual demarcation should be from ‘the mouth of Sir Creek to the top of Sir Creek, or from the top of Sir Creek eastward to a point on the line designated on the Western Terminus". From this point onwards, the boundary is unambiguously fixed as defined by the Tribunal Award of 1968.

India favours adoption of the Thalweg Doctrine in International Law. Under it, river boundaries between two nations may be divided by the mid-channel. Pakistan argues that the Doctrine is applicable to bodies of water that are navigable, and it holds that Sir Creek is not navigable.  India doesn’t buy the argument since the creek is navigable at high tide even for fishing trawlers.  And its proposal that the maritime boundary could be demarcated first, as per the provisions of Technical Aspects of Law of Sea (TALOS), is not acceptable to Pakistan, which, like in all disputes with India, favours international arbitration.