|
|
|
|
|
|
Vajpayee Stands Tough On Pakistan, Hindu Extremists Attack Muslims
 |
|
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
|
NEW DELHI, India, March 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee Monday ruled out any immediate pullout of troops from Pakistan's border, in an attempt to overshadow communal unrest in restive Indian states.
Vajpayee also dispelled Western fears that massing around 800,000 soldiers by the two South Asian rivals on their borders could lead to another full-scale conflict, news agencies reported.
"There is no such proposal," Vajpayee said when asked about the possibility of a military pullback.
"There is no threat of such a war... However, we are prepared for any eventuality," he told a televised press conference in the northern town of Shimla.
India's hawkish Defence Minister George Fernandes, however, pulled out all the stops Monday and launched a bitter attack on Pakistan and its President Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf, for his part, delivered a stern warning to India during Pakistan's National Day ceremony last Saturday.
"If India has any aggressive designs, it should not remain under any sort of misconception. Pakistan today possesses a powerful military might and can give a crushing reply to all types of aggression," he said in Islamabad.
Fernandes, who in 1999 sparked a diplomatic storm by calling China India's enemy number one, described Musharraf's weekend warning to India as "childish."
Addressing combat troops in Longawal, the desert site of a fierce tank battle between India and Pakistan in 1971, he chided Musharraf and said the Pakistani ruler was living in a "make-believe world."
Fernandes said he was being repeatedly asked by army commanders and others on the duration of the border deployment.
"We will not be able to give an answer right now. When the time comes the answer will be given. We certainly want to take a decision on it without wasting much time. We are ready for talks with Pakistan if Musharraf accepts India's conditions and normalizes the situation."
Meanwhile, sectarian unrest continued in India, with Hindu extremists attacking Muslims. At least five Hindus were shot dead by police Monday when extremist Hindus attacked processions of Shiite Muslims in the northern desert state of Rajasthan, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Seventy others, including 45 policemen, were injured in clashes that erupted when a procession for the holy month of Moharram was attacked by a stone-pelting mob in Gangapur town, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Rajasthan's capital of Jaipur.
State deputy police chief Arun Duggar said police opened fire on the Hindu attackers after they blocked the path of the Muslim marchers and went on a rampage in the normally quiet town.
Duggar said a large police contingent has been rushed to Gangapur to bring the situation under control and identified the attackers as extremists of at least three Hindu hardline parties.
He said the police resorted to firing after the use of tear-gas and batons failed to disperse the mobs, adding that a curfew was clamped on the Hindu-majority town.
The senior official also reported a similar attack on a Moharram procession in the state's Pali district and said at least 14 people were injured in the communal flareup.
He said armed policemen were patrolling the riot-affected area of Pali.
In the western state of Gujarat, the site of the decade's bloodiest Hindu-Muslim rioting that left more than 700 people dead (mostly Muslims) since the end of February, curfews and tight security marked the annual religious event.
Street processions that accompany Ashura, the 10th day of Moharram when Shiites mark the death of Prophet Mohammad's (Peace be upon him) grandson Hussain, were cancelled after Muslim leaders appealed for low-key mourning in the wake of the Hindu-Muslim riots.
"There is already communal tension in the state and we do not want to fuel it any further by taking out the processions," said Gujarat Chand Committee president Maulana Shabbir Aalam.
"Instead, many of us will be fasting to mourn the death of the Muslims who were burned alive in the recent riots," he said.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) meanwhile reported renewed sectarian clashes in the state's Sabarkantha district Monday where rioters torched an unspecified number of houses and shops belonging to Muslims.
The authorities rushed crack troops from the paramilitary Border Security Force to Sabarkantha's Prantij town which bore the brunt of Monday's violence, PTI said, adding that a mosque was also destroyed during the rampage.
Police used tear-gas as a mob of around 5,000 Hindus systematically attacked Muslim houses in the district. A security guard at a private factory in neighbouring Surat district was stabbed to death late Sunday night.
|
|
|
|
