INDIA: India has ruled out talks with Pakistan over disputed Jammu and Kashmir state and has issued a fresh challenge to its nuclear rival by telling it to stop waging "proxy war" or face the consequences.
"We said war clouds were hovering [between India and Pakistan\], but sometimes lightning strikes even if the weather is clear. We hope that lightning will not strike," India's Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, told a press conference in the state's summer capital, Srinagar.
His comments come a day after he told soldiers deployed against the Pakistan army in Kashmir's border areas to be ready for a "decisive fight".
More than one million Indian and Pakistani troops, amassed along their common border since last December, have been locked in artillery and mortar duels following last week's militant attack on an army base in Kashmir's winter capital, Jammu.
Thirty-one people, including 11 women and 11 children, all members of soldiers' families, were killed in the strike.
"The situation is serious and it is a challenging situation, and we will meet the challenge," Mr Vajpayee said.
Pakistan announced it was recalling its troops deployed on United Nations peacekeeping duties in Sierra Leone and the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, warned that any military conflict between the neighbours had the potential of igniting nuclear war.
Mr Straw, who will soon visit India and Pakistan to try to defuse tension between them, told BBC radio that there was a "risk" of nuclear war between the two South Asian rivals. The United States has said that the Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Richard Armitage, would leave for the region on June 4th for talks with the leadership of both countries.
Mr Vajpayee said he was "disappointed" that Pakistan's president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, had failed to make good his promise made earlier this year to end the 13-year Muslim insurgency in Kashmir, which has claimed more than 35,000 lives. "Promises were made but they were not implemented. Words must be matched by deeds. That has not happened," Mr Vajpayee said.
"India has created a situation on our borders which demands that we should reorganise and redeploy all forces in a ready state," Pakistan's information minister, Mr Nisar Memon, said, of his country's decision to recall its troops from Sierra Leone.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Mr Abdul Sattar, called on the United Nations to put pressure on India to begin negotiations over Kashmir.
In a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Delhi was described as "an arrogant power" which was using the fight against terrorism as a pretext for aggression. India opposes any UN or outside mediation on Kashmir, claiming it to be a bilateral dispute.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but is claimed by both. Pakistan further complicated the dispute by transferring a third of its share of the principality to China to build a strategic military highway across it.
Beijing is highly unlikely to abandon the territory.
Meanwhile, artillery duels which began last week following the May 14th Jammu attack are continuing along Kashmir's borders. Nearly 40 people have died on either side of the border in the firing and nearly 30,000 border villagers have fled their homes in both countries, seeking shelter in schools and tented camps.
