ISLAMABAD, June 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Pakistan Monday asked India to withdraw its forces from the Siachen Glacier unconditionally so as to peacefully resolve the 20-year-old dispute on the world's highest battleground.

    "India committed aggression in 1984, it has to vacate the aggression to make the Siachen Glacier a peaceful area," Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abass Jilani said at a weekly news briefing.

    The remarks came one day after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for efforts to peacefully resolve the dispute during a visit to the 6,000-meter-high glacier, making it "a mountain of peace".

    The dispute erupted in 1984 after Indian forces quietly sneaked into the area which, Pakistan says, violated the 1948 Karachi Peace Agreement and the 1972 Simla Accord signed between the two countries.

    Since then, the two sides have lost over 1,500 people to inhospitable weather, rather than gunfire, where the mercury drops to 40 degrees below the freezing point.

    There has not been a single bullet fired since November 2003, after the two neighbors agreed to a cease-fire along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between them.

    Pakistan demands redeployment of forces to the level that existed before the 1971 Indo-Pak war while India wants authentication of forces at the present positions.

    "Once India takes this step (withdraw its troops), Siachen would certainly be a mountain of peace," Jilani said.

    The Siachen issue is one of the eight-point agenda items that Pakistan and India are currently engaged in as part of their 20-month-long peace process to resolve their outstanding disputes including Kashmir.

    The military officials of the two countries met in Islamabad on May 26-27 but failed to make progress while maintaining their respective positions. Enditem