INDIA/PAKISTAN: India yesterday raised the military pressure on Pakistan ahead of today's nationwide televised address by President Pervez Musharraf, in a tactic calculated to intimidate him into declaring a decisive crackdown on terrorists operating in Kashmir and to cool fears of a war with its nuclear neighbour.Rahul Bedi, reports from New Delhi.
India is demanding decisive action from Gen Musharraf against Pakistan-based terrorist groups fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir. Those demands took on new urgency yesterday after India's chief of staff, Gen S. Padmanabhan, described as serious the military situation between the nuclear-armed rivals, and spoke of the "scope" for a limited conventional war between the two.
"When two countries mobilise their forces and place them on the border, it is not normal. The situation can comfortably be described as serious," Gen Padmanabhan told a press conference in New Delhi ahead of Army Day next week.
"I have mobilised to be ready for war," he said in reference to the massive Indian troop build-up along the frontier with Pakistan. India blames Pakistan for last month's suicide attack on the parliament in Delhi.
Gen Padmanabhan also warned Pakistan against contemplating a nuclear strike against India, which has conventional military superiority over Islamabad. "If anyone is mad enough to use nuclear weapons against India, the perpetrator shall be punished so severely that his continuation in any form would be doubtful," he said.
"We are ready for a second strike," Gen Padmanabhan said. "Let me reassure you that India has sufficient nuclear weapons," he added in what is possibly the most bellicose of statements to come from Delhi following the attack on the Indian parliament last month.
After their tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan retained its first-use option of weapons of mass destruction. India settled for a second, retaliatory nuclear strike. Both sides have nuclear-capable missile that can strike deep into the other's territory.
Foreign diplomats, however, said Gen Padmanabhan's remarks were a "calculated and calibrated" move in a dangerous poker game between the two sides.
"India has been saber rattling after its military deployment was completed by threatening, but having no intentions of waging one," one European diplomat said. It merely wanted to back up diplomatic moves with military pressure, he said, but he admitted that this time Delhi would not back down without extracting "suitable and firm promises " from Pakistan.
"This time it's for real, with front line deployment of soldiers," Gen Padmanabhan declared. "We are not playing at soldiers now and neither are we exercising," he added.
Gen Padmanabhan admitted the US military presence inside Pakistan would have a certain "inhibiting effect" in escalating the stand-off between the two armies, but added that when "two wild bulls fight in the jungle they carry on regardless".
India has mobilised over 500,000 troops and its three armoured divisions along its 3,000 km frontier with Pakistan, placed its navy and air force on "high alert" and deployed its nuclear-capable missiles. Pakistan has reacted similarly, concentrating its forces along the line of control that divides Kashmir between the two rivals who claim the Muslim-majority state.