Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to visit Pakistan early next month to sign an agreement on troops' withdrawal from the world's highest snow clad battle ground, Siachen glacier, officials said. The Indian leader had earlier stated that he would visit Pakistan in case the two sides agreed on something ‘substantial' while hinting at possible pact on troops' withdrawal from Siachen. Both the sides have been striving to reach the vital accord on Siachen through formal and informal channels. They were able to remove most of the irritants in the recently held interior-secretary level talks in New Delhi and the rest of the task has been assigned to officials engaged in secret diplomacy, officials said. The two sides have resolved to do away with the hiccups like authentication of current positions of troops deployed in Siachen well before the visit of Indian prime minister so that the agreement be announced then by the top leadership of South Asian nuclear states. One hurdle in the way of Siachen agreement was the demand by two sides vis-à-vis mutual assurance that positions vacated by the two militaries would not be occupied by each other, officials said. They added that the interlocutors have overcome this hindrance and assurances have been extended by them to each other.
