US not to intervene in Indo-Pak water tussle

Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Robert Blake said Pakistan had frequently raised the controversial and contentious water issue with India during his recent trip to Islamabad, but added that the US had no intention of intervening in the bilateral issue.

Pakistan should instead take it up with the Indus Waters Treaty's independent arbitration panel, he said.

The water issue has been portrayed in some segments of the Pakistani media as "water terrorism on the part of India".

Blake, during an interaction with the media at the Foreign Press Center, said, "This is a question that came up in virtually every single meeting I had in Pakistan, not only with civil society people, the press and everywhere.

"And, what I said to everybody there was that if Pakistan believes that India is violating the Indus Waters Treaty, then Pakistan should avail itself of the opportunity to submit whatever grievances it has to the independent arbitration panel that has been set up by the Indus Waters Treaty."

He said: "As many of you know, both countries have appealed to that panel many times in the past, most recently with respect to the Baglihar Dam. So this is a functioning mechanism that has worked well in the past.

"If there are serious issues that Pakistan believes need to be addressed, then that is the address to which it should make its claim," he said.

When pressed by a Pakistani reporter on US role in alleviating the tensions between India and Pakistan on this issue, Blake asserted that "we're not going to get involved in bilateral issues related to water, because I think the World Bank in the best mechanism for that."

"But I do believe that if asked, that the United States could help both sides with respect to water supply and again how to make better use of the existing water supply. How to make more efficient use of it, how to increase water storage, rainwater harvesting, a lot of those kind of techniques," he said.

"So, that's where we and other friends of both countries might be able to have a role."

As far as the US is concerned, he said both India and Pakistan nwere facing the water crisis due their rapidly expanding populations and rapidly expanding economies, and that both countries must look at conserving water and making efficient use of the available resources.

"In Pakistan, there's a particular urgency to looking at the agricultural sector, which accounts for more than half of water usage," he said.

Blake said there were "a great many practices that are inefficient," and cited the example of "the practice of flood irrigation, that is modified would make a significant difference to the amount of water that is used in Pakistan."

"That's the kind of thing we are working with Pakistan on. One of the things that we're doing now in Pakistan that's noteworthy is we have a tube-well initiative, where we are helping to make 10,000 tube wells more efficient by replacing the engines on them. And that's just one of the many --and, that's both an electricity and also a water issue," he said.

Blake reiterated that this was where "the real focus should be, as we try to figure out how to improve water storage but also water management and water efficiency," and disclosed that the US embassy in Islamabad was "looking at ways to do that with our friends in the government of Pakistan".