PAKISTAN: Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups are pursuing a new strategy to strike at religious targets in India and spark sectarian strife to hurt New Delhi, India's national security adviser said yesterday.
The groups, fighting against Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, were recruiting Indian Muslims and training them to attack religious places across the Hindu-majority country which is also home to more than 140 million Muslims.
MK Narayanan's comments came less than two weeks after suspected Islamist militants set off two bombs in the northern Indian city of Varanasi, one of Hinduism's holiest pilgrimage centres, killing 15 people and wounding dozens.
"I think it's a new shape being given to the whole thing. It's not based on territory, it's not based on ideology, it's just an attempt to create a divide between the majority and minority communities," he told Indian TV channel CNN-IBN in an interview.
Mr Narayanan said New Delhi had information that these militant groups planned to target religious places and sensitive political and economic centres.
"Almost all of them are . . . going across, sometimes Bangkok is a port from which they go and sometimes it is west Asia," he said, referring to the Indian recruits. "But there is always, by and large, a Pakistani connection."
There have been several attacks on Hindu religious centres by suspected Pakistan-based militants in recent years, seen as an attempt to scuttle nearly three-year-old moves to make peace between India and Pakistan.
The nuclear-armed neighbours launched peace talks in early 2004 but they have made slow progress, particularly on the core territorial dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Both countries claim the region in full but rule it in parts. They have twice gone to war over it, while a 16-year revolt against New Delhi's rule in its part of Kashmir has killed more than 45,000 people so far.
The two sides have made some proposals to reach a final settlement on Kashmir, including one by Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf who proposed joint management or joint control over the valley.
Mr Narayanan said joint management was not an option. "I must confess that the suggestions which are emanating from the other side are something that will not lead us very much forward."