British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Wednesday struck an optimistic note at the end of his two-day trip to India and Pakistan and said that though the situation remained dangerous a war on the subcontinent was “not inevitable”.
Speaking after a meeting with India’s Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in New Delhi, Straw hinted that a deal to defuse the crisis was under negotiation.
He said there was material from his discussions worthy of further consideration, but refused to elaborate.
Most observers believe that India has privately signalled to Britain and the United States that it does not intend to mount an imminent attack on Pakistan, waiting instead to see whether General Pervez Musharraf, its military ruler, delivers on his promise to end “cross-border terrorism” and crack down on militants.
This week it was reported that local police aided by FBI agents arrested a man believed to be an important member of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. Abu Abdullah (35), an Algerian who was in charge of Islamic schools in eastern Afghanistan during the Taliban’s tenure, was taken into custody along with another Algerian during a raid in the north-western city of Peshawar, police said.
With intensive shelling spreading across virtually the entire 2 720km Indo-Pakistan border, where one million men are dug in, the situation in the region remains grim.
Fighting has erupted at the Siachen Glacier in Northern Kashmir — the world’s highest battlefield — as well as in the remote Himalayan border towns of Kargil and Dras, where Indian officials said six people were killed on Wednesday by Pakistani fire.
On Monday Musharraf said infiltration by militants into India had already stopped. But two days ago India said it was still going on.
Asked which side he believed, Straw said: “The test of any statement by country leaders is by action and not words.” It was up to Musharraf to follow through, he added.
Straw said it was clear that “neither side wishes war”. But he added: “I know enough military history to know that sometimes war takes place without the desire of either side.”
Over the next week the international community will exert further pressure on India and Pakistan to step back from the brink. Vajpayee has snubbed a request from Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet Musharraf at a summit in Kazakhstan next week — but both leaders are expected to turn up. Putin will meet them separately.
The US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, will also fly to the subcontinent next week.
Straw, who also met India’s home and defence ministers, said there was no distinction between terrorism and “terrorism masquerading as freedom fighting” — a clear dig at Musharraf’s unrepentant support for Kashmir’s struggle against Indian rule. Indian officials could scarcely conceal their delight.
But the foreign secretary had little to say about Kashmir itself, where as many people have been killed by India’s frequently brutal counter-insurgency as by foreign militants. The violence continued on Wednesday when gunmen, apparently unhappy with an article in a pro-government Kashmiri newspaper, shot the editor.
India’s Foreign Secretary, Jaswant Singh, this week said there was no time frame for Musharraf to make good his promise to clamp down on militants. But he said India had waited patiently and the situation was now urgent.
Unconfirmed reports suggested that the wireless system used by militants in Indian Kashmir to communicate with their base camps in Pakistan had been cut off.
India’s Defence Secretary, George Fernandes, meanwhile confirmed that fierce artillery exchanges were taking place in the Kargil and Siachen sectors, where hostilities are usually kept to a minimum because of the extreme environment.
Over the past two days Pakistani gunners have “rained hellfire” on Indian positions near the town of Kargil, sources indicated.
Although no war between India and Pakistan has been declared, shelling is now going on across their entire border — from high-altitude Siachen through Kashmir, where five people were reported killed on Wednesday, and down to the sweltering plains near the town of Jammu. Pakistan said 13 people had died in Indian shelling.
Fernandes said the recent intense Pakistani firing was part of a manoeuvre designed to test India’s mountainous defence positions. Pakistan was engaging in covering fire to allow 2 000 to 3 000 militants — some of them former Taliban fighters — to cross into Indian Kashmir, he claimed.
On Thursday Pakistan moved troops to its eastern border with India after 30 people were killed in further cross-border violence.
The forces were being shifted from the Afghan border, where they have been aiding US forces in the search for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, a Pakistan government spokesperson said.
The move comes after suspected Islamic militants stormed a police base in Kashmir, killing two officers, and cross-border shelling killed at least 28 other people.
Adding to the tension, Pakistan’s new ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, said that Islamabad had never ruled out using nuclear weapons first in a conflict. India has a no-first-use policy.
“India should not have the licence to kill with conventional weapons while our hands are tied” by removing the first-use option, Akram said at the UN headquarters in New York.
International efforts are continuing to avert an outright war over India-controlled Kashmir. Analysts believe that if a conventional war escalated into a nuclear conflict there could be 12-million immediate deaths in the two densely populated countries.
Diplomatic efforts to ease tensions have been complicated by militant attacks, which India says Pakistan encourages. Pakistan insists it has done all it can to stop cross-border incursions by Islamic militants based in its territory.
Militants raided the police base in Doda, 176km north-east of Jammu, overnight and remained holed up inside, a police spokesperson said on Thursday. Police were being evacuated from the building and officials were considering blowing up parts of it to try to flush out the armed Islamists.
The shelling in Kashmir resumed soon after Straw left the subcontinent.
Pakistan denied US claims that any movement of troops could jeopardise attempts to seal the Afghan border and prevent the escape of Taliban and al-Qaida forces.
Rashid Quereshi, chief spokesperson for Musharraf, said the troops were being sent to areas “where they are needed in the prevailing situation on the borders”.
Witnesses in the north-western frontier area said they had seen dozens of army trucks moving troops and light weapons.
India and Pakistan have been on a war footing since an attack on India’s Parliament in December, which New Delhi blamed on two Pakistan-based militant groups and the country’s spy agency. Pakistan and the two groups have denied the allegations. Pakistan has also said the threat of war may force it to redeploy troops from Sierra Leone, where it forms a large part of a UN peacekeeping mission.