Steve Quayle News Alerts

June 7, 2002

India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir for half a century, in wars that are as much about religion, as they are about land and politics. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

NEW DELHI, India, June 7 — After gaining assurances that Pakistan won’t start a full-scale war with India, a top American diplomat received a commitment from New Delhi on Friday that there is “no alternative to peace” in the standoff between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
“TENSIONS ARE a little bit down,” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said after meeting with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “I feel very good about the discussions in India.”
Armitage said both sides had assured him they want to avoid war, but he offered no specifies on how armies might be coaxed away from the brink of conflict.
“In the present time, we are trying to manage things and bring down the tension,” Armitage told reporters.
Armitage was asked about news reports that Washington would propose the deployment of U.S. and British troops to monitor the disputed border in Kashmir province — where India says it is being victimized by cross-border terrorists attacks.
Armitage said he had brought no such message and called speculation about U.S. and British involvement “far-fetched.”

Pakistan has indicated a willingness to see third-party monitoring of the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, which is claimed in its entirety by India and Pakistan and has been the flashpoint in two of the three wars they have fought.
But Vajpayee has rejected the idea of outside involvement, saying instead India and Pakistan could jointly patrol the border.
Armitage’s visit to the capitals will be followed up next week by a trip to the region by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Vajpayee did not join Armitage at the news conference.

INFILTRATION PATTERNS
But the Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Nirupama Rao, told a separate briefing that Armitage was advised by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that Pakistan saw the need for permanent action to stop infiltration of India’s territory by Muslim extremists from Pakistan’s side.
“That’s something we hope to see translated into action,” Rao said. “We need to check whether this is a credible assurance.”
Asked whether India has seen some evidence of infiltration lessening across the India-Pakistan frontier in the past week, Rao said India had not seen any pattern of this.
There has been “no established trend to suggest that there has been a change in the situation on the ground,” Rao said.
India has refused to have dialogue with Pakistan until it sees an end to the cross-border incursions.
But earlier on Friday, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said India was committed to peace.
“We are very much committed to moving on the path to peace because to peace there is no alternative,” Singh told reporters during a break in his discussions with Armitage. “That has been India’s conviction and commitment.”
Armitage said he was able to relay to Singh “the tone, the tenor and the content” of his discussions with Musharraf.
Armitage had said in Pakistan his talks with Musharraf had provided “a very good basis” to help prevent war.
India has insisted it won’t talk peace with Pakistan until it sees an end to cross-border terrorism by Islamic militants who want predominantly Muslim Kashmir either to gain independence or to be merged with Pakistan. The Americans have agreed that Musharraf must stop the infiltration.

CONTINGENCY PLANS
Meanwhile, a top U.S. military officer said that the United States has plans to reposition American troops now operating in and around Pakistan in the event war breaks out between India and Pakistan.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Brussels, Belgium, he could not discuss details of the contingency plan, which had not been implemented Friday.
About 7,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, which shares a border with Pakistan. A smaller number of American forces are in Pakistan; sailors and Marines are in the northern Arabian Sea. Thousands of troops from allied countries also are in the area.
The contingency plans for the repositioning of American forces were drawn up by Gen. Tommy Franks, who is responsible for U.S. troops in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Arabian Sea, and Adm. Thomas Fargo, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, whose area of responsibility includes India.
Myers also said that, to his knowledge, there is no U.S. intention to offer the use of American troops to monitor the Line of Control that separates the Pakistani and Indian sectors of Kashmir.

CLASHES CONTINUE
Meanwhile, officials on both sides said that Indian and Pakistani troops continued to shoot across the Line of Control on Friday.
Heavy Pakistani mortar fire killed three villagers and wounded another six in the Punch district of India’s portion of Kashmir, police spokesman Subhash Raina said. The area is 125 miles northwest of Jammu, the winter capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state.
In the Pakistani side of Kashmir, witnesses said panic-stricken residents fled to safety after Indian artillery shells fell about a half-mile from the city limits of Kotli, about 22 miles from the Line of Control.
There were no reports of casualties, but witnesses said the city was deserted.

The disputed mountain region, held by India, but struggling for independence, is rife with violence, rich with beauty.
“Thousands of shops have closed down,” roadside hotel operator Abdur Rehman told The Associated Press by telephone. “People are too scared to stay here.”
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since gaining independence from former colonial ruler Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir. The latest threat of war erupted in December, hen Islamic extremists staged a deadly attack on India’s Parliament building in New Delhi.
An outraged India claimed the militants were backed by Pakistan’s spy agency, a charge denied by Pakistan.
Both nations deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to their international border and the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, which both claim in its entirety. Shelling intensified last month after a militant attack on an India army base killed 34 people, mostly wives and children of soldiers.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/753586.asp