India, Pakistan ‘Very Close’ to War

May 21 —  A separatist Kashmiri leader was shot to death during a memorial rally in Indian-controlled Kashmir Tuesday, as India’s prime minister headed to the violence-wracked Himalayan province and fears grew of another war. Pakistan’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Kader Jaffer, said the nuclear-armed neighbors are “very close” to war.
   
From the origins of the India-Pakistan rivalry to its modern nuclear reality.  “THEY ARE very close,” he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio Tuesday. “And therefore it is necessary for all our friends to get together, bring sanity where there is total insanity.”
 Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao refused to answer directly when asked if the two countries are on the brink of war.
 “Nowhere has India been belligerent, but things have reached a pass where India’s sovereign interests have to be defended,” she said.
 In the latest incident, Abdul Ghani Lone, who was attacked in a hospital by a Hindu nationalist in April, was shot dead on at a memorial gathering in a cemetery, commemorating the 12th anniversary of the assassination of a Kashmiri independence leader.
 Lone was one of the leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, a group of political and religious parties that advocate Muslim-majority Kashmir’s separation from predominantly Hindu India.
 The party had not been invited to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his forthcoming visit, and had called for a strike on Wednesday, saying it wanted the international community to realize Kashmir’s problems cannot be solved by short-term measures, such as local elections.
 Lone was sitting on a platform in front of a crowd of 5,000 people, when three masked men approached and he was shot, said independent Aaj Tak television, whose reporter was present.
 One of the men rolled a grenade into the crowd, but it did not explode, the TV report said.
 Lone and two bodyguards were rushed to a hospital. Lone and one of the guards died, said Nisar Ahmad, one of Lone’s relatives who had gathered at his home. The other guard was being treated for injuries.
 
MORTAR, SMALL-ARMS FIRE
 Meantime, in the latest border clashes, three Indian villagers were killed and seven wounded as the two armies traded mortar and small-arms fire in Rajouri, a Kashmir district on the international border, said Indian army spokesman Maj. Animesh Trivedi.
 Pakistan’s government said two people were killed and seven wounded by Indian gunfire. Neither report could be independently confirmed.
 Also Tuesday, suspected Islamic guerrillas killed two activists of the National Conference party, which governs India’s Jammu-Kashmir state, in Kupwara district, nearly 65 miles north of the state’s summer capital, Srinagar, said T. Acharya, a spokesman for paramilitary Border Security Force.
 Elsewhere, four soldiers were wounded when suspected guerrillas ambushed their vehicle in Doda district, 125 miles northeast of Jammu, the state’s winter capital, police said.
 In another sign of increasing tension, the government said it was sending troops to the border from the heart of Gujarat state, where they had been deployed to halt bloodshed between Hindus and Muslims.
 “Taking into view the situation on the border,” the army is being sent “to where they have an operational role,” an army spokesman told Reuters.
 The 1,300 soldiers were deployed in March in the western border state where some 950 people have been killed since India’s worst religious violence in a decade erupted in late February.
 
U.S. DIPLOMACY
 In all, India and Pakistan have sent about 1 million soldiers to their frontier in the latest flare-up over the disputed Himalayan region, which has provoked two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. Both countries claim the region in its entirety.
 The United States, Britain and the European Union have urged both countries to exercise restraint and recommended talks, which Pakistan favors. Washington announced plans Monday to send Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the region.
 U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said there was “a lot of active diplomacy” on the India-Pakistan front.
 Analysts say Washington, which relies on Pakistan as a crucial ally in its war on terror and has U.S. troops in the country, is piling pressure on both sides to act with restraint.
 Pakistan’s relationship with Washington improved dramatically following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States when President Pervez Musharraf rallied to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, which ousted the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.
 But Rice said on Monday that Musharraf should keep his promise to stop the militants.
 “We take the assurances and the commitments that President Musharraf made...that they would deal with the infrastructure of terrorism — we take those quite seriously.”
 However, Jana Krishnamurthy, president of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s right-wing party, accused the United States of double standards in its fight against terrorism.
 “When precious lives of Indians are lost in cross-border terrorism, the United States advises us patience,” Krishnamurthy said. “Patience has its own limits.”
 India has refused talks until militants based in Pakistan stop crossing the border to stage attacks. India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and financing the Islamic guerrillas fighting since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence or merger with Pakistan.
 Islamabad says it has no control over the militants and denies assisting them, though it supports their aim of separating the only Muslim-majority state from predominantly Hindu India.
 
VAJPAYEE’S TRIP
 Vajpayee was traveling to Jammu on Tuesday to visit those injured in an attack on an army base last week that killed 34 people — mostly soldiers’ wives and children.
 New Delhi blamed Islamabad and two Pakistan-based Islamic guerrilla groups for the attack on the outskirts of Jammu. Pakistan condemned the attack and denied any involvement.

Since Friday, heavy firing along the international border has forced more than 20,000 people to flee villages on India’s side, army spokesman Trivedi said. Firing spread to new areas Monday night, he said.
 In Pakistan, meanwhile, an opposition alliance said it will not join in a meeting Wednesday of all political parties called by Musharraf to discuss rising tensions with India.
 “We have demanded the resignation of Gen. Musharraf and the formation of a national interim government acceptable to all political parties ... which can really represent the nation and can unite the country to face any challenge, internal or external,” said Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, secretary general of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy.
 The alliance includes 18 parties, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/753586.asp