Indian PM consults Kashmir military chiefs
India’s prime minister held talks with senior Cabinet ministers and military officials in disputed Kashmir today, as shelling between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan pounded villages on both sides of the border.
At least one Indian soldier was killed and seven civilians injured, police said.
In Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee held talks with Defence Minister George Fernandes, Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani, top military officers, intelligence chiefs and senior civilian leaders.
Amid fears of a fourth war between India and Pakistan, it was the first time an Indian prime minister has headed a meeting of the Unified Command, which includes the chiefs of India’s army, navy and air force.
The state’s chief minister has chaired emergency military talks previously.
Yesterday, standing 15 miles from the disputed frontier, Vajpayee told hundreds of soldiers on the tense Kashmir border to prepare for war.
Army officers responded by declaring that their troops were ready to die and India’s navy moved five warships nearer to Pakistan.
Cross-border shelling has killed dozens in the past week in divided Kashmir, which both nations claim in its entirety. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region.
In Washington, the US State Department appealed for an end to the shelling and asked Pakistan to curb the influx of Islamic militants into the territory.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to coordinate the West’s policy on the explosive situation.
Mr Straw is expected in the region next week, and Powell is sending his deputy, Richard Armitage, soon afterwards.
In Islamabad, Pakistan’s top military leaders and Cabinet issued a statement endorsing efforts to resolve the dispute through negotiations, but warned that Pakistan was ready ‘‘to meet any contingency resolutely and with full force’’.
India says it is being forced to fight a proxy war with Pakistan, which it accuses of training and arming Islamic militants who have been fighting for Kashmir’s independence or merger with Muslim Pakistan for 12 years. The militants have staged deadly attacks inside mostly Hindu India.
Islamabad says it has no control over the militants and provides them only moral, not material, support. In September, Pakistan joined the US-led war on terrorism.
The cross-border firing resumed last night and continued into the morning in the Hira Nagar sector of Indian-controlled Pakistan, a police officer said.
The two sides also fired mortar and artillery guns in the Punch and Naushera sectors across the 1972 ceasefire line, said an army spokesman.
At least 65 homes were destroyed in the villages of Manyari, Pansar and Chadwal after being hit by tracer fire, the police officer said.
The area is 50 miles southwest of Jammu, the state’s winter capital.
Indian and Pakistani troops have been firing at each other’s positions since last Friday following an attack on an army camp on the outskirts of Jammu by suspected Islamic militants that killed 34 people - mostly soldiers’ wives and children.
Today, suspected Islamic militants threw a grenade near a bus stop in Sopore, 35 miles south of Srinagar. Three civilians were slightly injured.
Otherwise, the Kashmir Valley was quiet, as shops, public buses and schools shut down for the second day of a strike to protest the murder of a Kashmiri separatist leader.
