NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 27 December — India aimed its missiles at targets in Pakistan yesterday as the United States upped pressure on Islamabad to crack down on groups New Delhi holds responsible for a Dec. 13 attack on its parliament.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was designating Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad, the two groups which India has blamed for the parliament attack, as foreign terrorist organizations under US law.
He said in a statement that the move was "another important step in our campaign to eliminate the scourge of terrorism". "These groups, which claim to be supporting the people of Kashmir have conducted numerous terrorist attacks in India and Pakistan," Powell said.
"As the recent horrific attacks against the Indian parliament and the Srinagar State Legislative Assembly so clearly show, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad and their ilk seek to assault democracy, undermine peace and stability in South Asia and destroy relations between India and Pakistan. The United States looks forward to working with the governments of both India and Pakistan to shut these groups down," Powell’s statement added. The designation of both groups as terror organizations makes it illegal for supporters in the United States to provide them with material support and requires US financial institutions to block their assets. US authorities are also authorized to deny visas to group members.
Pakistan has already frozen Lashkar’s assets and on Tuesday said it had arrested the founding head of the Jaish group, Maulana Masood Azhar. But the Indian foreign minister yesterday dismissed the moves as "cosmetic".
"The kind of trickery such as changing names, simply changing headquarters from one place to another and the cosmetic seizure of assets is really to make a mockery of the gravity of the situation," Jaswant Singh told reporters after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) met in the evening.
Ministers discussed further diplomatic action against Pakistan but a final decision was postponed by at least 24 hours in the absence of Defense Minister George Fernandes who was visiting front-line troops in Kashmir.
Fernandes told the Press Trust of India that India’s missile system was "in position." The minister did not elaborate but media reports said the army had moved batteries of its Agni II (Fire) missile from their distant southern Indian facilities to the border with Pakistan in northern Punjab state. The missiles have a range of 2,500 kilometers and are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Pakistan also has indigenously built Shaheen II missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to a distance of 2,500 km. Both missiles can be fired from mobile launchers.
In India’s west, military convoys headed for the border while a steady stream of civilians carrying household goods and food supplies headed the other way, fearing war and unable to work fields now taken over by the military. District officials in the western desert state of Rajasthan said blackout exercises were being held in border districts at night to prepare civilians ahead of a possible war. "Sirens are sounded, air force planes will fly over the cities and no power generator sets will be allowed to function," one district official said
Two thirds of the people in some villages have already fled. "Every morning, we get up to work in our fields and discover more and more of our land occupied by tanks and artillery guns," said farmer Jagjit Singh. "We return home, unable to do anything."
Pakistan said it would move only a "bare minimum" of forces to its border with India. The country’s top military spokesman rejected as lies Indian newspaper reports that Pakistan had moved ballistic missiles to the border. "The Indians continue to tell lies and just to justify their own buildup they moved on their formations to the border," Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi said in an interview with CNN.
Indian security forces claimed they killed 16 Pakistani soldiers and destroyed 19 bunkers in heavy retaliatory fire across the de facto border in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan said the report was baseless.
"It’s totally baseless," said a Pakistani military spokesman. "Not a single Pakistani soldier has embraced shahdat (martyrdom). They are safe and sound."
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the leaders of India and Pakistan to refrain from actions or statements that could escalate tensions between the neighbors. In letters to Vajpayee and Musharraf, Annan implored the two leaders to make every effort "to foster a calmer atmosphere so that differences — no matter how great — could be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy," Annan said in a statement.
