By Zafarul-Islam Khan, IOL South Asia Correspondent

NEW DELHI, May 29 (IslamOnline) - Notwithstanding the current heightened tension between India and Pakistan, delegations from the two countries are meeting in New Delhi Wednesday evening, May 29, to participate in the annual meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission which is taking place as scheduled despite speculation for many weeks not only about the cancellation of the meeting but even of the abrogation of the treaty itself by India.

The three-day meeting is yet another triumph for the four-decades-old treaty which has resiliently withstood the test of time, but is also an indication that war after all may not take place.

The Pakistani delegation has already arrived in New Delhi via Dubai since direct flights between the two countries remain suspended.

“There is no question of abrogating the treaty. The present level of tension will have no bearing on the talks being held tomorrow,” Minister of State for Water Resources Bijoya Chakraborty told reporters in New Delhi, Tuesday, May 28.

She termed the commissioner-level meeting a “routine one” and said, “India would share data pertaining to flood forecast and the talks will be held as per the international treaty signed between the two countries in September 1960.”

The New Delhi meeting will be the 87th meeting between the Indus Water Commissioners from both countries since the signing of the treaty. The last meeting was held in Islamabad in May 2001.

There have been widespread demands in India for the abrogation of the treaty, but the cancellation of an international treaty entails many complications as well as affects the defaulting nation's credibility and integrity.

Signed on September 19, 1960 between then-Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and Pakistan President Ayub Khan at Karachi along with WAB Iliff, World Bank president, the treaty said the waters of the rivers Ravi, Beas and Sutlej were to be used for India while Jammu and Kashmir's three main rivers, the Indus, Jhelum and the Chenab, were for Pakistan since they flowed downstream into the country.

This meant that though the flow of water could be used by India as it is the upper riparian state, it was barred from building storage facilities or diverting the rivers. Since most of the water projects were in the Indian territory, India even paid 63 million pounds to Pakistan as compensation.

Apart from the World Bank, the Indus Water Treaty also involves countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Britain and the United States as part of a collateral Indus Basin Development Fund Agreement. The commission formed under the provisions of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty is entrusted with the task of ‘establishing and maintaining cooperative arrangements for the implementation of this treaty’.

The three-day long meeting will be held with a six-member delegation from the Pakistani side, headed by M Mammen, Pakistani commissioner on the Indus water commission while the Indian side will be led by his counterpart, AC Gupta.

In the past, the Jammu and Kashmir government had threatened to pass a resolution in the state assembly to press the central government to scrap the Indus Treaty. The Ministry of External Affairs had actively toyed with the idea of employing the “unilateral abrogation” of the Indus Water Treaty as one of the many options to “punish” Pakistan for its alleged role in the December 13 attack on the Indian Parliament.

“India could take diplomatic action by scrapping a 42-year-old water treaty with Pakistan, thereby choking the flow of water to its neighbor,” minister of state for water resources Bijoya Chakroborty threatened a week ago. “If we decide to scrap the Indus Water Treaty, then there will be drought in Pakistan and the people of that country would have to beg for every drop of water,” Chakraborty had told media persons in Guwahati.

Even Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee in an informal chat with local newspaper editors in Jammu on 21 May said that the question of how to stop the flow of river waters to Pakistan was also being examined. In reply to a question whether the infrastructure to stop river water flow to Pakistan existed, he said, "we are looking into this aspect also".

Notwithstanding the rhetoric and the worst military stand off between the two countries since 1971 war there has not been any serious threat to the Indus water treaty. The treaty has been cited as a success in all conflict resolution statements and has survived the wars of 1965, 1971 and the mini-war the two countries fought in Kargil three years ago. Its design is unique. Instead of dividing the water of all the rivers, it simplified the process by giving the three eastern rivers to India and Indus, Chenab and Jhelum to Pakistan.

There has also been a fear of international intervention if India unilaterally abrogates the treaty. Officials at the World Bank and the International Commission on Irrigation have gone on record warning India of serious international repercussions if it tampers with the Treaty unilaterally.

Any Indian action on these lines would also send a wrong message to other neighboring countries with whom it has signed similar treaties. India signed the Mahakali Treaty with Nepal on February 12, 1996 and an agreement on the Ganga waters with Bangladesh on December 12 1996.

India would also be blamed for going against protocols of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which clearly state that, “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited and includes drinking water installations, supplies and irrigation works.” Studies show that if India was to build storage dams even a one per cent reduction in the water supply to Pakistan could affect at least 1.4 million people living there.

The Final Provisions stated in article X11 of the treaty specify that neither of the two parties could at any time modify or terminate the water-sharing arrangements unilaterally. The only option available is to modify or terminate the agreement by way of a subsequent treaty and its ratification by the two countries.

The treaty provides for the setting up of the commission and also submitting of reports to both governments before June 1 of each year. Even before the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament, Pakistan had expressed reservations on the way India had been so far conducting the whole affair. Pakistan had expressed the desire to visit the Baglihar, Dulhasti and Salal projects. The first two projects are located on the Chenab river and were considered to be “sensitive areas” by India.

Islamabad has been complaining that the Baglihar project being undertaken by the Indian government violates the spirit of the Indus Water Treaty, and therefore, wants to inspect it. Pakistan had alleged that the project’s design would enable India to disrupt the flow of the river. Reportedly, India wants to create a reservoir with gates to control the flow of water. However, India has argued that the site is not suitable for a non-gate reservoir.

India has also rebuffed Pakistani charges for flouting the Indus treaty. “The exchange of information is still going on. Every month, data on the gauge and discharge of rivers in the Indus basin is given to Pakistan as required under the treaty,” retorted a senior water resources ministry official. And this, the official said, has continued even after December.

Experts also say that India does not stand to gain if it abrogates the treaty. Those asking for abrogation are not familiar with the geography of the region, they say. This will have no immediate impact on the ground since it will require 10-15 years to build these facilities. Experts also fear that any move to abrogate the treaty would mean flooding Punjab and Haryana if its water is diverted to Bhakra, Pong or Thein dams in India.

Pakistani officials have rejected the Indian threats of scrapping the treaty as highly suspect in content both from legal and technical points of view. Pakistani officials say the Indian threats to curtail water supplies to Pakistan was a hoax prompted by India's hysteria and could not be taken to mean that India had decided to use water as weapon. Pakistan said it would amount to a blatant violation of an international treaty.