Officer killed as Kashmir shelling resumes
Shelling and small-arms fire killed an army officer and wounded three civilians along the Kashmir border ahead of a visit today by the US defence secretary aimed at defusing tensions between India and Pakistan, an Indian army spokesman said.
Although the South Asian nuclear rivals have been making conciliatory gestures to ease back from their war footing, a million soldiers still line their disputed Himalayan frontier and both countries acknowledge the threat of war remains.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld planned to meet with senior Indian officials and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi tomorrow, then continue his shuttle diplomacy in Islamabad on Thursday.
World leaders have been urging restraint from the longtime adversaries, as a fourth war between them would now carry the threat of nuclear war.
Meanwhile, army spokesman Lt Col HS Oberoi said an officer was killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir and three civilians were wounded in the Naushahra sector close to the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Dozens of people have been killed on both sides in almost daily exchanges of heavy fire by the two armies since a May 14 attack by suspected Islamic rebels on an Indian army camp near Jammu killed 34 people, mostly wives and children of soldiers.
The two armies have been nose-to-nose along the frontier since a militant attack on India’s Parliament in December killed 14 people. New Delhi accused Pakistan’s spy agency and Islamic militants for the suicide assault, which Islamabad denied.
India has accused Pakistan of financing and training Islamic militants who have been fighting for independence of India’s only Muslim majority state, or Kashmir’s merger with Muslim Pakistan. The 12-year insurgency has cost some 60,000 lives.
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf told the leadership in New Delhi via a US envoy last week that the infiltration of Islamic guerrillas would not be tolerated.
New Delhi relaxed air space restrictions Monday that were imposed following the December 13 attack on Parliament after acknowledging cross-border incursions by Muslim militants had been reduced.
This clears the way for Pakistan International Airlines to fly across Indian airspace, cutting flight times to destinations such as Bangladesh.
’’There is some fall in infiltration, but difficult to say if it is a definite trend,’’ said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao, adding however that the Pakistani carrier could not yet resume flights to India.
Pakistan quickly welcomed the ‘‘step in the desired direction’’ while urging India to withdraw its military ‘‘back to peacetime positions.’’
India’s announcement fell short of expectations for conciliatory gestures it might have made to defuse the crisis, but Western officials have hinted more steps are likely to follow.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Colin Powell both said yesterday that they believed India would also redeploy five warships from the Arabian Sea, near Pakistan, back to the Bay of Bengal, on the other side of the subcontinent.
But Indian navy spokesman, Cmdr Rahul Gupta, told The Associated Press that the warships had not been ordered back to India’s eastern waters.
