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Clashes Escalate as Indo-Pakistan War of Words Sharpen
JAMMU, India, Dec 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - India said two of its border troops were killed Sunday by Pakistani fire amid intensifying clashes between the two archrivals in the disputed Kashmir region and Indian declarations desiring the U.S. declare Pakistan a "terrorist state."
The two Indian soldiers were killed and three more injured when they came under Pakistani fire while on a "routine patrol" in the Samba sector, 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Kashmir's winter capital Jammu, a spokesman for India's Border Security Force said.
Pakistan in turn said one civilian was killed and 12 injured by earlier Indian shelling across the Line of Control (LoC), India and Pakistan's de facto border splitting the state of Kashmir between the two, saying it had attacked Indian army bunkers, destroying four of them and damaging several others in retaliation for the earlier Indian attack.
An ammunition stockpile nearby was also set ablaze in the firing, a defense ministry official told the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
In Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, a police official said the two sides exchanged fire at several points on the LoC.
"They are using mortars and targeting the civilian population without any provocation," a police official in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir said, adding that a school had also been damaged.
The official in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, said there has been "extraordinary movement across the Line of Control, which we can observe with the naked eye."
But Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said that while Indian forces were in "a state of very high alert" he did not anticipate war.
"I would like to remain optimistic till distinctly negative signals come," he said in an interview with the Press Trust of India.
India has been demanding Islamabad crackdown on two Pakistan-based activist groups fighting New Delhi's rule in Kashmir, which it holds responsible for a December 13 attack on India's parliament that left 14 dead, including the five gunmen.
"I want to hope that better sense will prevail with Pakistan and the demand that we have made for handing over those who have been behind the terrorist attacks will be acted upon so that the guilty can be punished," Fernandes said.
On Friday, India recalled its ambassador to Islamabad for the first time since the 1971 war with Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, and also severed all road and rail links with its western neighbor. A move Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf described as a "very arrogant and knee-jerk response."
Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said following a Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting Sunday that Musharraf's comments were "extremely regrettable" and showed he had failed to grasp the "gravity of the situation."
"I must discount the general's tendency to engage in military malapropism. But I cannot help feeling that his reaction to an issue of such importance only shows he is living in an Alice in Wonderland world," Singh said.
With tensions rising between the nuclear-capable powers, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said India was ready for any eventuality.
"Peace is India's ideal goal and we pursue it zealously. But if crisis knocks on our door the country will not shy from its duty," Vajpayee told a music awards ceremony late Saturday.
"The world should know that although we pray for peace we are well-versed in the art of war," he warned.
In Pakistan, all air force bases were put on high alert, Air Marshal Syed Qaiser Hussain, deputy chief of the air staff, was quoted by the Associated Press of Pakistan as saying.
"If India commits aggression, the country's land, air and naval forces will be fully prepared to defend the country," Hussain added.
"In the prevailing circumstances, an Indian attack against Pakistan cannot be ruled out, and if it indulged in this foolish act it will encounter a befitting reply from Pakistan," Hussain told reporters.
New Delhi has welcomed calls by the United States for Pakistan to crackdown on Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, the two groups India says were behind the parliament attack, but some officials are calling for tougher action.
Singh said India would give a "final response" to Pakistan after Christmas if it failed to act on the request.
"A final response to Pakistan will be taken after Christmas when the cabinet committee meets again," Singh told reporters after emerging from a two-hour meeting held at the Indian premier's residence.
Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, a hardliner who is the cabinet number two, said he would ask Washington to declare Pakistan a "terrorist state" when he travels to the United States next month.
"I will obviously communicate our position and the detailed evidence we have. This leaves no doubt that Pakistan is a terrorist state," Advani told the
Hindustan Times in an interview published Sunday.
"I feel that the U.S. has a clear choice and it cannot afford to have double standards. All terrorists are the same."
Advani said he has told U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that it was difficult for Indians to understand how Pakistan, like India, could be considered part of the U.S.-led "coalition against terrorism."
"There is a terrible dichotomy there," Advani said.
India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since independence from British rule in 1947.
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