In 1972 Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto signed the Simla Agreement. As the Indian scholar A.G. Noorani notes, under the agreement the Line of Control in Kashmir “was not accepted as an international border proper.”
P.N. Dhar, who was present at the talks, later wrote in his book that the two leaders reached an understanding at the last minute. “The tacit understanding, no doubt was that gradually the Line of Control would emerge as an international border. But this remained only a tacit understanding.”
The account is disputed. Abdul Sattar, the other surviving witness to the talks and later Pakistan’s foreign minister, “flatly rejected the claim,” Noorani wrote in Dawn in 2012.