Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 28, 2002

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan May 28 — Pakistan on Tuesday test-fired a missile that could be capable of carrying nuclear warheads into Indian territory, the third and final launch in a series of much-criticized tests. India, in its first formal response to a speech by Pakistan's president, called his remarks "disappointing" and "dangerous."

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was in Islamabad on Tuesday for a meeting with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, hoping to nudge the nuclear-armed adversaries to the negotiating table.

India's harsh words follow Musharraf's address to his nation Monday, in which he promised Islamabad would not initiate war with India, but would defend itself if "war was thrust upon it." He denied cross-border incursions into Indian-controlled Kashmir by Pakistan-based Islamic militants.

India's Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said Tuesday that the Pakistani president's statements on Islamic militant infiltration were disappointing and dangerous.

"Disappointing as it merely repeats some earlier reassurances that remain unfulfilled today," Singh said. "Dangerous because of deliberate posturing, tensions have been added, not reduced."

Musharraf in January gave a landmark speech in which he vowed to halt terrorists operating from Pakistani territory. India claims he has done little to fulfill this pledge and that Pakistan-based Islamic militants continue to cross into Indian-controlled Kashmir.

As the rhetoric between the two sides becomes more angry, the international community has pushed for negotiations. Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee may meet next month in Kazakhstan on the sidelines of the Council on Cooperation and Confidence Measures in Asia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to mediate one-on-one talks.

Pakistan has already accepted the invitation, agreeing to talk to Vajpayee "anywhere, anytime." India has said it will not hold talks until cross-border attacks stop.

India accuses Pakistan of waging a proxy war by training, arming and funding Islamic militants based in Pakistan and Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, and allowing them or helping them to cross the frontier into Indian territory.

Pakistan has denied supporting the Islamic extremists with money and arms, but says it give "moral" support for what it calls a freedom struggle.

In his speech Monday, Musharraf again denied that cross-border incursions were occurring. Singh suggested Tuesday that this position was disingenuous.

"The general engaged in an offensive and tasteless revilement of India," Singh said in a prepared statement. "It contradicts his own expressed desire for peace and mocks the expectations of most of the international community."

As tensions have steadily escalated on the border between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals, the world has grown worried that another war could escalate into a nuclear conflagration.

India and Pakistan have already fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir. Both nations claim the Himalayan province in its entirety.

Relations were strained after an attack on India's Parliament in December, and became more contentious after an assault on an Indian army base in Kashmir earlier this month. India blamed Pakistan-based Islamic militants. Islamabad denounced both attacks as terrorism and denied any involvement.

Musharraf, in his speech Monday, said Pakistan had taken "bold steps" against the militants, referring to his January ban on five Islamic militant groups. He accused India of failing to reciprocate.

Musharraf said the same people who carried out those "terrorist" assaults in India were responsible for attacks in Pakistan, including an assault on a church frequented by foreigners and the bombing of a bus carrying French engineers.

The attacks are being carried out by people who "want to raise tensions as much as possible," he said.

Singh countered that Musharraf has not shut down the Pakistan-based militant training camps in Pakistan Kashmir.

"The current war against terrorism will not be won decisively until their base camps inside Pakistan are closed permanently," he said.

The United States and Britain have also urged Musharraf to do more to stop cross-border incursions by Islamic militants. Both nations were also critical of Pakistan's missile tests, saying they could only provoke greater tension.

Pakistan has defended the tests as routine, saying they had nothing to do with the current crisis in Kashmir. On Tuesday it test-fired a HatfII missile, also known as an Abdali, on Tuesday, which flew 108 miles. It was the third missile tested by Pakistan since Saturday. India conducted similar tests in January.

Earlier Tuesday, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said al-Qaida and Taliban fighters were operating in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

A Pakistani army spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, rejected Fernandes' statement as baseless. Pakistan has repeatedly said that the fighters in Kashmir are Kashmiris.

The Bush administration has said al-Qaida and Taliban forces have likely spread across dozens of countries, far from their former headquarters in Afghanistan. U.S. Special Forces troops recently deployed to western Pakistan's tribal belt to help Pakistani troops flush the militants out.

Meanwhile, residents in Indian-ruled Kashmir said they were weary of the decades-old conflict.

"For both (India and Pakistan) we are not their people," said Sajad Bhat, an insurance company executive in Indian Kashmir's capital, Srinagar. "We are a mere battlefield for these two countries."

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