NEW DELHI/JAMMU, 18 March — US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca started a three-day official visit to India yesterday to better understand the situation in the region, a US official here said.
Rocca, who arrived in New Delhi late Saturday after visiting Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged Jaffna Peninsula and its capital Colombo, was slated to have several meetings today with Indian officials.
“She will call on Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh on Monday and hold talks with National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra on developments specific to India and the US and on the situation in the region,” said the US official.
She will also meet Commerce and Industry Minister Murasoli Maran and Foreign Ministry officials.
Rocca will discuss simmering military tensions between nuclear-rivals India and Pakistan who have massed some 800,000 troops in battle formations along their border since an attack on the Parliament on Dec. 13. Delhi accuses Pakistan-based militants of carrying out the attack.
Rocca will pass along her assessment of the situation to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who visited India twice since New Delhi offered to help the “war on terrorism” launched after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Her trip also have a social thrust, with a visit yesterday to a village inside the Taj Mahal city of Agra that is fighting child labor with funds from the US Agency for International Development.
According to a report prepared by the Labor Department in 1999, some 12,000 children work in the country’s sporting goods industry in the northern cities of Agra, Jalandhar and Meerut. Diplomatic significance of Rocca’s visit, for revival of India-Pakistan talks, was rebuffed even before it began.
However, sources indicate that she would be focusing on the revival of the talks. Progress in bilateral links between the US and India, which has been on the upswing, is also on the agenda. United States has agreed to resume sales of military equipment to India, which were stopped under sanctions imposed after New Delhi’s nuclear tests in 1998.
Meanwhile, India and Pakistan exchanged heavy mortar and machine-gun fire across the border of disputed Kashmir yesterday, ending a month-long lull between the old foes. “The lull was broken at seven in the morning when Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked 82 mm mortar fire on Indian positions in the Samba sub sector,” a Border Security Force (BSF) official said.
Indian guards retaliated and were joined by the army. Frightened villagers fled the area near the southern end of Kashmir, he said. Officials said a soldier was injured in the fighting that lasted for around two hours.
“We have no information on casualties or damage to property on the other side,” one said. Police in Kashmir said 13 people, including nine activists and two soldiers, were killed in separate incidents across the state in the past 24 hours.
Soldiers shot dead four activists in a gun battle near Pakistan border at Kremhora area of Kupwara district. Two activists were killed yesterday in another gun battle with security forces at Surankote area of Poonch district, police said, adding that two soldiers, three activists and two civilians were killed since Saturday evening.
