Last week, Pakistan asked the World Bank to appoint a neutral expert to settle a water dispute with India, which undermines recent U.S.-backed efforts to improve bilateral relations between South Asia's two nuclear neighbors.

The controversy revolves around a dam India is building in Kashmir, a Himalayan region disputed with Pakistan since 1947 and the cause of two wars and countless skirmishes between the two nations.

Islamabad says that the Baghliar dam violates a treaty the World Bank brokered in 1960 for the distribution of water resources between the India and Pakistan.

The Indus Water Treaty was needed because all the five rivers that feed the Indus Valley, which became Pakistan territory after India's partition in 1947, start on the Indian side of the Himalayas. The Pakistanis have feared that this gives India an undue advantage of cutting off their water resources whenever they want.

Fortunately, the treaty withstood the test of two wars and decades of tensions that followed the signing of the agreement more than 40 years ago.

But in the late 1990s, India began to construct a dam at a place called Baghliar on the Indian side of Kashmir. The dam will allow India to use the water of the Chenab River for irrigating lands on its side of the Line of Control that divides Kashmir.

Islamabad believes the 450 MW Baghliar project on the Chenab in Indian Kashmir will divert up to 7,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water a day destined for Pakistan. According to the Indus Water Treaty, India is allowed to build a reservoir on the Chenab only if it does not interrupt the flow of water.

But a senior Indian official told journalists in New Delhi the dam does not violate the treaty and India is unlikely to stop construction of the dam. Pakistan disagrees.

It will severely reduce water supplies to Pakistan and will adversely affect some of our fertile agriculture lands, said Masood Khan, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad.

As the dispute escalated, India and Pakistan held several rounds of talks to resolve the issue bilaterally. But last week, after the failure of the last round of talks in New Delhi, Pakistan said it will ask the World Bank to arbitrate.

India, however, urged Pakistan not to internationalize the issue and instead seek a peaceful solution in bilateral talks.

But on Wednesday, Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Jehangir Karamat, met the World Bank president and formally asked the bank to arbitrate.

Karamat is believed to have informed Wolfensohn that Pakistan had already exhausted all possible means for bilaterally settling this issue with India and that's why it was appealing to the bank for arbitration.

He also delivered a message from Islamabad saying said that since the World Bank was a party to the agreement for the distribution of water resources between India and Pakistan, it was required to arbitrate whenever there's a dispute.

Pakistan believes that the treaty does not require an arbitration request to be endorsed by both Islamabad and New Delhi, as some World Bank officials say. It is the first time Pakistan has sought arbitration in the World Bank-brokered water-sharing treaty, since it was signed in 1960.

But a leading expert of the bank in Washington has predicted a prolonged and complicated legal battle over Baghliar project. Salman Salman, the lead counsel of the International Law Group of the World Bank, cautioned that reference for arbitration could end up opening a Pandora's Box with the dispute being drawn out for years.

In his presentation, posted on the World Bank Web site, he said, We are not a guarantor of the treaty but a signatory to certain purposes. His assertion was that the treaty had not empowered the bank with a monitoring or enforcement mechanism.

While the bank has an obligation to appoint a neutral expert, it does not have an unfettered right to appoint him, he said, adding that a neutral expert could be nominated in consultation and consent with both the parties.

However, this has not discouraged the Pakistanis. There are provisions in the treaty that require the World Bank to arbitrate and we have asked the bank to play this role, said Khan.

Officials in Islamabad said they intend to take up the disputed with the outgoing World Bank president when he arrives in Islamabad on Feb. 7.

Wolfensohn's visit is mainly a farewell call, but Pakistan wants to avail itself of this opportunity to make a comprehensive presentation of its case for the bank's arbitration on the power project, officials said.

Wolfensohn is also expected to visit New Delhi during this trip.

World Bank officials, however, are urging India and Pakistan to resolve this issue at a meeting between their prime ministers during a South Asian summit in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka next week.

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