between India and Pakistan are focused on their territorial dispute over Kashmir, Pakistan's alleged support for terrorist attacks in India and historical animosities emanating from the partition of the Indian subcontinent. Water disputes between both states, however, offer a potential catalyst for conflict. The Indus River system is the largest, contiguous irrigation system in the world with a command area of 20 million hectares and an annual irrigation capacity of over 12 million hectares. The headwater of the basin is in India.

Although the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 has tempered disputes between India and Pakistan over the river system, it has failed to resolve their long-standing dispute over the Wular Barrage. Since 1985, Pakistan has objected to India's Tubul Navigation Project on the River Jhelum. Pakistan claims thatIndia has violated Article I (11) of the Indus Waters Treaty, which prohibits both parties from undertaking any "man-made obstruction" that may cause "change in the volume of the daily flow of waters" and Article III (4) which bars India from "storing any water of, or construct any storage works on, the Western Rivers."

Furthermore, Pakistan regards India's control of the River Jhelum as a threat to its security should India decide to withhold the water. The Indus Waters Commission has failed to resolve the issue and it has been on the agenda of the Indo-Pak talks at Lahore in February 1999, the Agra Summit of July 2001, and part of the Composite Dialogue initiated in January 2004.

Meanwhile, on its eastern borders India is also engaged in several water