By IOL South Asia Correspondent

NEW DELHI, May 26 (IslamOnline) - Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee Sunday shrugged Pakistan's second missile test and went into huddle with his military experts. Vajpayee, who is now vacationing in the northern resort of Manali, told the nation that "in this hour of crisis, we should prepare to defend ourselves…The nation should stand shoulder to shoulder against the challenge. We want victory, victory over terrorism…India is determined to win the war against terrorism."

The Prime Minister Sunday morning met his key security advisers, including Defence Minister George Fernandes and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra .

Vajpayee repeated Sunday that India's patience with Pakistan has run out and called for unity among the nation to achieve victory over terrorism. Vajpayee said Sunday that India should have struck back against militants in Pakistan immediately after the December 13 attack on the Parliament.

"When the attack on Parliament occurred, that time itself India should have given its reply…Everybody asked us to be patient and assured us that such a thing would not happen [again]. After that, incidents have taken place again."

Vajpayee

He added: "We want to tell the international community that when the whole world is united against terrorism, the U.S. forces are in Afghanistan, why should we bear these acts of terrorism and for how long?"

According to a report in the Times of India (TOI) Saturday, 25 May, India has now given Pakistan "two weeks" to meet Indian demands, following which there will be war. According to the TOI report, during this period Pakistan has to end cross-border terror and begin dismantling training camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

According the TOI report India came close to acting against these camps last week, but it drew back from the brink after obtaining what an official termed "ironclad commitments" from the U.S. and UK that Pakistan would act on these demands.

India has assured the U.S. that if the Pakistanis do end infiltration, India will match it by demobilising its army and, over time, engage Pakistan in a substantive dialogue over Kashmir.

India accepts that violence will not cease in the Valley even if the Pakistanis do the needful in the coming weeks.

In return for the Indian restraint, the U.S. is moving to provide more sustained technical support to India to end cross-border terrorism. Last week's Indian defence mission to Washington, led by Defence Secretary Yogendra Narain, has been assured that the U.S. will provide its latest sensors and high-tech surveillance equipment such as unmanned aerial aircraft to patrol the border.

India's brinkmanship seems to be paying off. World leaders, including Bush and French President Jacques Chirac, who held lengthy telephonic talks with Vajpayee Saturday, have made it clear they are expecting Musharraf to take action against Islamic militants who have set up bases inside Pakistan administered Kashmir.

Sunday's Washington Post quoted President Musharraf as saying ties between the two countries have eroded to such a point that a "serious" threat of war exists and that the standoff has the potential to become "extremely explosive."

There are unofficial indications that any "May 14 like" incident will be enough "justification" for New Delhi to go to war. Analysts also indicate that this may happen within the next two weeks since monsoon season will commence in this area in a month's time from now and with the rains on no war will be possible and the soldiers with their equipment will have to move away from the exposed locations on the borders.

The war rhetoric has paid off even on the internal level. It has drastically improved the ruling BJP's position. From a pariah only two weeks ago it now commands more popularity at home and opposition parties are now openly supporting its policies to defend the country. The pogroms of Gujarat have been relegated to the backstage.

London Times Saturday, May 25, said that at least three million people will be killed if a limited nuclear war broke out between India and Pakistan, according to a study. " Millions would die in the immediate blast and fire and from radiation. Others would suffer destroyed homes, lack of water and facilities and disease years later", the Times reported quoting the American magazine New Scientist.

"At least 2.6 million people would die or be injured in India and 1.8 million in Pakistan even if only a tenth of the nuclear weapons of the two countries was exploded above ten of their largest cities," MV Ramana, a nuclear researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey and other nuclear researchers concluded.

The figures are based on the impact of 10 Hiroshima-force bombs detonated at a height of 600 metres over the five largest cities each in India and Pakistan.

The targeted cities used in the scenario are Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Delhi in India and Faisalabad, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

According to the report, casualties on the Indian side would be 1.7 million dead and 900,000 injured while the toll in Pakistan would be 1.2 million dead and 600,000 injured.

These would be, however, only the immediate casualties from blast, fire and radiation. An unknown number of deaths would occur from cancer in future years.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield had said Friday that millions of people would die in case of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. Economies of both countries would "go into the tank", water supply and agriculture would be damaged and neighbouring countries would be affected, Rumsfeld told the Cable News Network.

A nuclear exchange would be a "perfectly terrible, terrible thing for the entire world," he said. He also said the U.S. has troops in Pakistan and Afghanistan whose lives would be endangered by an Indo-Pak nuclear exchange.

Keeping up with its show of preparedness and deterrence, a top Pakistani scientist disclosed yesterday that Pakistan has developed two types of nuclear arms and that hundreds of scientists are laboring to design nuclear missiles in the Kahuta Khan Research Laboratories.

"One is a smaller weapon that can be delivered by an aircraft. The other is bigger. One that was tested can be easily deployed on our Ghauri missiles," Abdul Qadeer Khan, director of the Kahuta plant and the man regarded as the architect of Pakistan's nuclear and missiles programmes, told The New York Times Saturday.

There are signs that the Indian pressure is yielding results after all. According to American media reports, President Musharraf has directed his 10th Corps, deployed in northern Pakistan and facing Indian forces in Kashmir, to stop infiltration of terrorists and jhadi elements into India.

President Pervez Musharraf was quoted Sunday by the Washington Post as saying the infiltration of militants into Kashmir had stopped. At the same time, he added: "We are very capable of an offensive defense. ... These words are very important. We'll take the offensive into Indian territory…Reciprocation is important." The newspaper said Musharraf accused India of sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan and of using war threats "to destabilize me, my government and Pakistan".

Reportedly this move follows a commitment extracted from him by the Bush administration. However, there is no confirmation from the Indian side that any perceptible change has taken place in the infiltration activity across the LoC. Understandably this change is taking place after Pakistan was offered "international assurances" that India would also take significant steps to end the decades-old stalemate over Kashmir.

Meanwhile, on the international borders and the Line of Control (LoC), where over a million soldiers are standing eyeball-to-eyeball for over five months, exchanges of fire continues. Reportedly the Indian army has orders to use all force in its arsenal without crossing the borders. Therefore, now even long-range artillery is being used. Pakistan too is replying in the same coin. In addition to continuous daily tally of the dead and injured soldiers and civilians, tens of thousands of villagers on both sides of the borders have fled their areas to safer places.