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Times of India News Service
The Times of India
June 24, 1999
Title: Gen. Malik leaves crossing of LoC to Union cabinet Author: Times of India News Service Publication: The Times of India Date: June 24, 1999 Chief if army staff General V.P. Malik on Wednesday indicated that it was difficult to flush out the Pakistani army from the Kargil sector without crossing the Line of Control (LoC). "If it becomes necessary to cross the LoC in our supreme national interest, the matter will be taken up by the cabinet," Gen. Malik said. However, he declined to disclose the army's assessment of the issue. "Crossing the LoC will be a cabinet decision. The cabinet has been meeting often and has been reviewing the situation. They have been consulting us (the three service chiefs). We have been attending these meetings," he said. He kept the matter open-ended, saying, "This is matter I alone cannot decide." The army chief, who maintained a cautious profile at his first ever news conference since Operation Vijay was launches a month-and-a-half ago, made two subtle observations. One was that the army is facing equipment deficiencies. "If a war is thrust on us, we shall fight with whatever we have. Meantime, the government is taking steps to see that important equipment deficiencies are rectified as early as possible," he said. His second observation was that there was a need to settle Pakistan's misadventure once and for all. "There is a need for us to look beyond Kargil," he said, when asked what the Indian army envisaged after it pushed out the Pakistani army from the occupied areas. "I don't want to say anything more," he said with a smile. Although he did not elaborate on the "constraints" being faced by the army, certain facts placed by him indicated the difficulties the army had encountered in tackling the situation. The incursion, spread over 110 to 120 km along the LoC, was still up to five to six kilometers inside Indian inside Indian territory. In other words, after almost two months of operations, the army had at places managed to push back the Pakistani army just two to three kilometers. "The operations have been slow on account of altitude, terrain and climate conditions, but steady," he said. Stating that the army had no doubt that the infiltration had been conceived, planned and executed by the Pakistani army, the army chief went on to term as "full of mischief, wrong, dangerous and unacceptable the Pakistani claims that the LoC was only 'delineated and not demarcated, not clear and ambiguous'. "If this was so, then India and Pakistan should have been in a state of war all across the 740 km of the LoC," he observed.
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