In from the cold.

The article reports peace negotiations between India and Pakistan. When they met in Delhi last month, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, and India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, agreed that their two countries' peace process was "irreversible". General Musharraf has since spelled out some possible ways to end the central dispute, over Kashmir. But Pakistan still seems far from proposing a solution India could accept. And after 58 years of hostility, including three wars, negotiations could take years. Yet on May 26th, senior defence officials from both sides met in Rawalpindi to discuss their 21-year row over the disputed Siachen glacier in the Himalayas. Millions of dollars have been spent simply trying to keep soldiers warm there--though hundreds have frozen to death anyway--with India clinging on to a ridge of no conceivable strategic use. Still, it will not withdraw without a credible Pakistani guarantee not to occupy the vacated ice. Pakistan has been unwilling to decouple the glacier from the broader dispute over Indian-administered Kashmir, where both India and Pakistan claim sovereignty, and many Kashmiris yearn for independence from both. General Musharraf has invited separatist leaders from Indian Kashmir to Pakistan, and India has agreed to let them travel.