India moves warships away from Pakistan
India moved its warships away from waters near Pakistan as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in South Asia with ideas for helping the nuclear-armed neighbours avoid another war over Kashmir.
But pro-militant groups in Pakistani territory vowed to continue their guerrilla insurgency and shelling and small-arms fire continued along the disputed province’s frontier.
Rumsfeld, who was meeting today with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and was then set to fly to Pakistan, said he had concrete ideas about ‘‘a whole series of things’’ to help ease tensions, but would not elaborate.
‘‘We’re not going in with a single proposal, nor am I a mediator, as such,’’ said Rumsfeld, offering a mildly upbeat assessment of the prospects for averting war.
Intelligence indicators showed virtually no improvement in the military standoff, he said, but ‘‘both sides have been saying things that are helpful and behaving in a responsible way.’’
Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said the threat of war remained real as long as troops were nose-to-nose on the Kashmir border.
‘‘As long as that capability remains, the situation will remain dangerous,’’ he said.
The Indian navy recalled its warships to Bombay a day after the government said it would allow Pakistani aircraft to fly over India after a six-month ban.
‘‘Ships of the western fleet, which were patrolling different areas of the north Arabian Sea, have been recalled to their base as per the government decision,’’ navy Cmdr Rahul Gupta said.
Gupta did not divulge the number of ships involved. The western command includes India’s only aircraft carrier, several submarines, missile destroyers and multipurpose frigates.
Five other ships from the eastern fleet were withdrawn from near Pakistan but remained on the west coast.
The two rival countries reached war footing in December after a deadly attack on India’s Parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan and Islamic guerrilla groups based there.
Pakistan denied involvement and announced a crackdown on the groups, but diplomatic, commercial and transportation ties were slashed while 1 million troops gathered along the 1,800-mile frontier from the Arabian Sea to China.
The warships moved near Pakistan after a May 14 militant attack on an Indian army camp in Jammu-Kashmir state in which 34 people, most of them soldiers’ wives and children, were killed.
Rumsfeld’s trip is part of an international effort to avert a fourth war between India and Pakistan since their 1947 independence from Britain. Two of the previous wars were over Kashmir, which both countries claim in its entirety.
Islamic militants have waged a 12-year fight for the independence of the Himalayan region or its merger with Muslim Pakistan. The insurgency has killed at least 60,000.
India’s government refuses to talk with Pakistan’s until India is satisfied that Islamic militants are no longer crossing the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between the two countries. India accuses Pakistan of financing and training the militants.
Pakistan says it only offers diplomatic and moral support to the militants. International diplomacy measures started with Musharraf’s assurance relayed through a US envoy - that he had ordered his forces to prevent the crossings.
In Pakistan, however, dozens of militants vowed to defy Musharraf’s ban on infiltrating India and demanded that Islamabad stop cooperating with Washington in neighbouring Afghanistan.
‘‘Jihad in Kashmir will continue,’’ said retired general Mirza Aslam Beg, a former Pakistani army chief.
In Pakistani Kashmir’s capital, the leader of the right-wing religious party Jamaat-e-Islami, told 10,000 supporters: ‘‘We will continue to cross the Line of Control as the struggle for Kashmir’s freedom continues.’’
