Musharraf and politicians discuss tensions with India
Pakistan’s President Gen Pervez Musharraf met his top politicians today, assuring them that the armed forces are capable of countering any Indian aggression.
As he spoke residents streamed out of some villages along the border with Indian where tension is mounting.
Gen Musharraf told the leaders of major parties that Pakistan wants peace and de-escalation, but its forces would strike back hard if attacked, the state-run news agency reported.
It said the politicians urged Gen Musharraf to work for greater national unity in the face of the Indian threat.
‘‘We only hope that sanity prevails,’’ Gen Musharraf was quoted as saying.
But other Pakistani leaders seemed less than optimistic about deteriorating relations with India. The two south Asian nuclear rivals have been sniping at each other and fortifying their borders for nearly two weeks.
‘‘Our anxieties are mounting, not only by the day but hours, as we receive information about the movement of Indian forces on the border,’’ Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said today.
Gen Rashid Quereshi, spokesman for Pakistan’s military-led government, said the meeting with Gen Musharraf was part of consultations with various sections of society, including Islamic clerics, to discuss what he called India’s aggressiveness.
Excluded were the two main fundamentalist Islamic parties, Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, which organised mass protests against Gen Musharraf in October after he decided to support the US-led coalition in Afghanistan.
Also missing were the Pakistan Peoples’ Party and a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League the two former ruling parties. The government will invite the two for a similar meeting, Raja Zafarul Haq of the Muslim League said.
Hostilities have increased since a December 13 suicide attack on India’s Parliament. India claims the Pakistani spy agency and two Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups - Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed - orchestrated the attack.
Pakistan says India has offered no evidence and is fabricating the charges to malign the secessionist movement in its disputed Kashmir region.
‘‘At the moment, we are hearing accusations from across the border. We want actionable evidence so that we can begin judicial process,’’ Mr Sattar said.
Overnight, Pakistani and Indian troops exchanged some small-arms and mortar fire across the disputed Kashmir region, Gen Quereshi said. There were no reports of casualties in what he called ‘‘the usual small-arms fire.’’
Haji Habbibur Rehman, a resident of Bhimber, said many families have sent their women and children to safer areas.
‘‘There is a lot of firing, especially during the night,’’ he said in Bhimber, 300 kilometres (180 miles) south of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir. ‘‘People are afraid and they are leaving the area in small groups.’’
In a refugee camp near Muzaffarabad, around 800 people living in tents for the last three years said they have little hope of returning to homes near the border.
‘‘We can’t go back because Indians don’t let us live in peace there,’’ said Gul Hasan, a middle-aged man. ‘‘Our houses have turned into ruins and we live in tents.’’
Saad Hasan Kazami, 60, said he was fed-up living as a refugee. ‘‘Either through war or talks, we should decide the Kashmir problem so that we may return home.’’
In Washington, US President George W Bush said he feared the Pakistan-India conflict could unravel the US-led coalition fighting terrorism.
Trying to ease tensions, Mr Bush called Pakistani and Indian leaders yesterday and asked them to cool it. Mr Bush urged Pakistan, a key partner in the anti-terrorism fight, to take new steps to rein in ‘‘extremists.’’
Hindu-dominated India accuses overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan of fomenting violence in its Muslim-majority state of Kashmir, where Islamic guerrillas are fighting for independence or merger with Pakistan.
Pakistan says it gives only political support to militants in Kashmir the cause of two of the three wars with India since British rule ended on the subcontinent in 1947.
Yesterday, Pakistan banned Indian satellite television programmes, along with Rupert Murdoch’s Indian-oriented Star TV channels, on cable networks for what it called their ‘‘poisonous propaganda’’ against Pakistan. Each country has barred the use of its airspace by the other’s national airline.
