India Non-committal on Peace Talks with Pakistan

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, January 02, 2002

India Non-committal on Peace Talks with Pakistan

India's foreign minister said on Tuesday he had had no confirmation on whether he would meet his Pakistani counterpart this week for talks on ending a tense standoff between the nuclear powers.

India's foreign minister said on Tuesday he had had no confirmation on whether he would meet his Pakistani counterpart this week for talks on ending a tense standoff between the nuclear powers.

Jaswant Singh told reporters he had "no confirmation as yet" on whether he would meet Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar for discussions when both attend a South Asian regional meeting in Nepal on January 4-6.

But a source close to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said there was "no chance" of talks at any level with Pakistan at the summit despite fears of war between the bitter rivals.

A Pakistani army official in Kashmir, the divided region that is a focus for tension between the neighbouring states, said the situation remained highly volatile.

"It's still highly explosive and dangerous," he said in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani-held Kashmir. "Any small incident could lead to the situation spiralling out of control."

New Delhi and Islamabad have been under heavy international pressure to defuse the standoff triggered by an attack on India's parliament last month, which India has called an attempt to eradicate the leadership of the world's largest democracy.

MILITANTS BLAMED

India has been demanding tough action by Islamabad against Pakistani-based militants, which it blames for the attack, and backed up its words with the biggest military buildup along its border with Pakistan in the past 15 years.

On Tuesday, Pakistan continued its crackdown on militant Islamic groups operating in the country, praised by India this week as a step in the right direction.

An official of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group said more than a dozen of its activists were detained in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh.

The group, fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, was among those India blamed for the parliament attack, which killed 14.

Pakistan accused India of continuing its troop buildup. New Delhi denied that, saying the buildup was virtually complete and "purely precautionary".

India accuses Pakistan of arming Muslim guerrillas and helping them infiltrate Indian-ruled Kashmir, largely Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state, where Muslim separatist fighters have been battling Indian security forces since 1989.

Pakistan says it offers only moral support to Kashmiris opposed to Indian rule.

SWAPPED NUCLEAR LISTS

Despite fears of war, the rivals renewed a 1991 deal not to attack each other's nuclear facilities, swapping their annual list of self-declared installations.

In a new year message to the nation, Vajpayee said he did not want war and would even consider talks on Kashmir, but only when Pakistan ended cross-border terrorism.

Both countries have scaled back diplomatic relations and severed transport links since the attack on the parliament.

In his message, Vajpayee told Pakistan to "shed your anti-India mentality and take effective steps to stop cross-border terrorism".

"You will find India willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the contentious issue of Jammu and Kashmir."

US President George W. Bush, who has been pushing for talks and pressing Pakistan to wipe out terror groups, called Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's efforts to crack down on militants "a good sign".

A spokesman for British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he had called Sattar and "welcomed the steps Pakistan had taken to clamp down on militant groups".

Pakistan said on Tuesday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair would visit Pakistan and India next week for talks.

The new year did not halt violence in Kashmir, as 15 people were killed within 24 hours in separate shootouts.

Vajpayee sounded a cautionary note, warning that India's own war on terrorism would be long and painful and telling Indians to be braced for anything.

"One should neither expect a quick and painless victory nor despair if more terrorist strikes take place."

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