Asia Times: Tough talk continues despite peace demands


	April 21, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Tough talk continues despite peace demands
By Ranjit Dev Raj

NEW DELHI - India's Defense Minister George Fernandes advised parliament on Wednesday of a massing of militants backed by the Pakistani army along the border, hinting at a rapidly deteriorating security environment.

Fernandes said the Indian government was ''aware that hundreds of heavily armed mercenaries backed by enhanced troop strength had been amassed by Pakistan along the line of control (LoC)'' in the northern part of the disputed territory of Kashmir.

He also spoke of reports of radar deployment and induction of additional units of the Pakistan army in the coastal marshlands of Kutch especially in the border villages of Keti Bandar, Shah Bandar, Musafirkhana, Nagar Parkar and Mithi.

Both Kashmir and Kutch saw action in which warplanes were downed and heavy artillery fire exchanged during an undeclared ten-week war between the two countries that began in mid-May last year. But most of the fighting was in the Kargil area of the LoC which separates the Pakistan and Indian controlled sections of Kashmir.

Since the war ended on intervention by US President Bill Clinton, there have been 1,659 violent incidents in Kashmir involving armed militants who, India claims, infiltrated across the LoC into Indian territory. Fernandes informed Parliament that a total of 845 ''terrorists'' were killed in these incidents which, he said, also claimed the lives of 175 Indian armed forces personnel.

Most of the other victims were ordinary people caught in the fighting, including 35 Sikhs massacred in Anantnag district on March 19, hours before Clinton began a five-day tour of India.

Clinton who made a brief stopover in Pakistan on March 25 at the end of the India tour urged a resumption of diplomatic dialogue but warned against attempts to ''redraw borders in blood''. His words were echoed at a press conference Monday by visiting British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook who broadly agreed with the Indian view that ''a successful dialogue without an end to violence will be too challenging a task for diplomats.''

An Indian foreign ministry official interpreted Cook's statement as ''recognition within the international community that the absence of cross-border terrorism is an essential element in resumption of meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan''.

India has steadfastly refused to resume talks until it saw evidence on the ground of Pakistan stopping a ''proxy war'' being fought for control over Indian-administered Kashmir using heavily armed insurgents. Pakistan has denied militarily backing the armed militancy and recently interior minister in the military government Lt Gen Moinuddin Haider warned at a press conference of impending action against ''sectarian groups''.

But on Tuesday, the Pakistan-based Harkat ul-Mujahideen group, banned in the US for terrorist activities, responded by saying that ''nobody dared stop its fighters from entering India-occupied Kashmir.'' The group's leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil was reported saying it was not bothered by ''redundant statements'' issued by the interior minister and considered the US itself as the ''biggest terrorist''. Khalil said in a statement that neither the Pakistani government, nor India nor the US could ''stop or control'' the ongoing jihad (holy war) to liberate Kashmir.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced constitution of a special ''group of ministers'' which would ''review the national security system in its entirety''. Vajpayee said, the group, including Fernandes, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, would act on the recommendations of a committee which had reviewed the conflict at Kargil on the LoC.

The committee, headed by defense expert K Subrahmanyam, had noted that the ''Kargil experience, the continuing proxy war, and the prevailing nuclearized security environment justified review of the national security system''.

India's policy of refusing to open dialogue with Pakistan's military government while attempting to isolate it diplomatically may have found endorsement from Cook but has come up for severe criticism from foreign policy experts and opposition leaders. Said Mani Shankar Aiyar, Congress party leader and former career diplomat, ''You can kick Pakistan out of international fora but you cannot kick Pakistan out of South Asia.''

Saner voices were also heard, earlier this month, from the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy in a declaration following its fifth convention in the city of Bangalore on April 8. ''Defying pressures from the government of India and Pakistan and ultra-nationalist forces the forum of 500 delegates from both countries renewed their pledge to work for peace,'' said convenors Tapan Bose and Feroz Mehdi.

The convention took place after a court rejected a petition filed by a Hindu fundamentalist group which claimed that the Pakistani delegation of more than 150 people consisted of agents from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence.

The declaration itself said the fifth convention met during a ''critical time of war, threats of war, nuclearization and persistent obstacles placed in the path of the assembly of peace-loving peoples of the two countries.'' It demanded a ''democratic resolution of the Kashmir problem,'' and awareness of the ''increasing danger of deliberate or accidental war breaking out with the risk of any conflict escalating to the level of nuclear holocaust''.

The declaration also demanded immediate resumption of dialogue by the two countries and a ''reversal of current military build-ups, horizontal and vertical denuclearization and a comprehensive no-war pact.''

(Inter Press Service)

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