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Missiles in "Position" as India Mulls Further Action Against Pakistan
NEW DELHI, Dec 26 (News Agencies) - India said Wednesday it had positioned its guided missile batteries and dismissed a Pakistani crackdown on armed Kashmiri resistance groups as "cosmetic," as the two South Asian rivals showed little sign of easing back on their war of rhetoric.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's cabinet committee on security (CCS) met in the evening to discuss further diplomatic retaliation against Pakistan following the December 13 attack on the parliament complex in New Delhi.
However, any final decisions were postponed by at least 24 hours in the absence of Defense Minister George Fernandes, who was visiting frontline troops in Kashmir.
The two countries have been massing troops and armor on their border since India accused Pakistan's military intelligence of masterminding the parliament attack by Pakistan-based activists that left 14 people dead, including all five gunmen.
Fernandes told the Press Trust of India that India's array of missiles were "in position." He did not elaborate, but media reports said the army had moved batteries of its surface Prithvi (Earth) missiles from their distant southern Indian facilities to the border with Pakistan in northern Punjab state.
The missiles have a range of 93 miles and are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Official sources said Wednesday's CCS meeting had considered downgrading the Pakistani embassy in India, withdrawing most-favored-nation trade status and banning the Pakistani international carrier from Indian air space.
India has already recalled its ambassador in Islamabad and announced the termination of cross-border bus and rail links as of January 1.
Pakistan has denied any involvement in the parliament attack and a senior government official in Islamabad said the United States was working hard to ease tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
"There is a flurry of telephone calls daily from across the Atlantic to defuse the tension," the official told Agence France-Presse (AFP), on condition of anonymity. "We are telling them [Washington] that India, which is kicking up the dust, is solely responsible for the current escalation. Therefore New Delhi should be asked to cool it off."
India has demanded that Islamabad act against two Pakistan-based Kashmiri groups - Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad - whom it blames for carrying out the parliament attack.
Lashkar, whose leader resigned on Monday, has denied responsibility. Pakistan has already frozen Lashkar's assets, and on Tuesday said it had arrested the founding head of the Jaish group, Maulana Masood Azhar.
However, public response from New Delhi has been dismissive.
"The kind of trickery such as changing names, simply changing headquarters from one place to another and the cosmetic seizure of assets is really to make a mockery of the gravity of the situation," Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told reporters after the CCS meeting. "We have all information regarding military movement inside Pakistan and we are fully prepared."
India on Wednesday called off its annual January 15 army parade, saying it could not spare troops now deployed on the border.
Fernandes said the massing of Pakistani soldiers was an inadvertent display of Islamabad's guilty conscience.
"On December 13, our parliament was attacked and from December 14 their soldiers were massing on borders because the thought must have been on their minds that India may not rest until it avenged the attack on parliament," Fernandes said.
The United States, China and Russia have all appealed to India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and avoid a damaging conflict.
Vajpayee said Tuesday that India was being pushed towards a war with Pakistan, while Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said his military was fully prepared to face all challenges.
And Defense analyst Riffat Hussain said India was bent on pushing Pakistan to the wall.
"India is in such a belligerent mood that it has left Pakistan with very little choice to maneuver," said Hussain, who heads the strategic studies department at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University. "Whatever steps Pakistan may take to defuse the situation may not be deemed enough by India as a result of the war psychosis that they have created."
Pakistan officials accuse India of trying to gain political mileage from the parliament attack in light of the U.S. war against global terrorism.
"The Indians think that this is one opportunity where they can get the international community to brand the freedom movement in Kashmir as a terrorist movement and then put it down once for all," said a senior Pakistani government official.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
But Khalid Mahmood, a political analyst from the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad, said there would be no new war.
"The Americans won't let the Indians go to war with Pakistan," he said. "War between Pakistan and India does not suit the Americans because it would adversely affect their mission in Afghanistan. Some of the measures which the Indians have taken so far are acts of hostility but not a prelude to the start of a military conflict."
He also accused India's ruling elite of trying to create a "war hysteria" but said this "is basically for domestic consumption."
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