New Delhi, July 29: A nearly five-year-long ceasefire along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir was teetering today after the Pakistani and Indian armies traded fire for over 16 hours overnight and India’s defence minister alleged that Pakistan had violated the truce of November 2003 19 times in seven months since January this year.

The firing stopped early this morning. For the record, both India and Pakistan have said they remain committed to maintaining the ceasefire but Monday’s firefight across the LoC and the series of shootouts across the contested border in the last two months are evidence of how taut the truce is.

Most important, the Indian and Pakistani armies have traded charges on misuse of a symbol of peace — the white flag — that rival militaries in battlefields rely on to signal a temporary truce to recover the dead and the injured. This action and the suspicion of intentions mean that the sanctity of the ceasefire on the LoC is already in tatters.

Armed disputes along the LoC that could be settled locally now have the potential of flaring into larger conflicts between the two countries. India and Pakistan now risk turning the clock back five years in Kashmir and getting into a situation in which the trading of fire from small weapons, and even heavier guns, could become routine.

The Indian and Pakistani sector commanders of the two armies held a flag meeting in the Nowgam area this morning after which the Indian army retrieved the body of one of its soldiers. Sepoy Mahesh was killed after Pakistani soldiers came into Indian territory and shot him during an altercation, according to an account available in Indian army headquarters.

The flag meeting was decided at a talk this morning on the telephone hotline between the Indian director-general of military operations, Lt Gen A.S. Sekhon, and his Pakistani counterpart. The DGMOs usually speak every Tuesday and are also supposed to be in contact “whenever the need arises”, an Indian defence ministry official explained.

Defence minister A.K. Antony said India was “exercising maximum restraint” — a phrase that means it retains the option of unleashing its firepower — and external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said in Tehran that the cease-fire violations were worrying. In the last three years, comments on alleged or perceived cease-fire violations have rarely been made by such senior government figures.

Information gleaned from army sources in Kashmir suggests that the Pakistanis had yesterday objected to the reconstruction of a bunker, a forward observation post, in a hotly contested valley in Kupwara, known as Kayan Bowl, where the demarcation of the LoC is ambiguous.

The fence along the LoC that India has erected runs behind the post and the bunker faces Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

However, the Pakistani army argued that the post was being rebuilt in what it considered was its territory. Among the agreed rules for the November 2003 cease-fire -- the biggest confidence-building measure between India and Pakistan since the two militaries faced off in 2001-2002 -- was a commitment by each side to refrain from construction of fortifications on the LoC. Sources in the Indian army argue that Pakistan had violated the rule by rebuilding its defences along the LoC in Jammu.

The Pakistani military spokesperson, Major General Athar Abbas, denied the Indian claim that four Pakistani soldiers were killed in Indian shooting, but the Indian army said its soldiers of the 22 Rajpur unit had killed them after losing one of their own.

Antony also linked the increase in cease-fire violations to increasing infiltration by militants across the LoC in Kashmir.

“The increase in cease-fire violations and firings across the LoC are a matter of concern to India,” he said. “Keeping in view the increased attempts to infiltrate, the counter-infiltration grid in the state has been suitably strengthened by our troops to check such incidents.”

The 19 cease-fire violations that Antony referred to included at least three violations of Indian airspace by Pakistani military aircraft in May and June.

The argument that cease-fire violations by Pakistan are designed to push and abet militants in Kashmir strengthens the belief of the security establishment that terrorists get into India with active encouragement from Pakistan, or from a section of its establishment, and they then encourage attacks on Indian soft targets such as the citizens of Bangalore and Ahmedabad.