NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 3 June — Indian and Pakistani leaders yesterday headed for a security conference in Central Asia but with no plans to meet to defuse a crisis edging their nuclear-armed countries to the brink of war. Both sides, however, sought to soothe fears of a nuclear conflict which have sparked a scramble out of the subcontinent by diplomats and their families.
After Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday described nuclear war as unthinkable for any sane person, India’s defense minister yesterday said nobody should worry about the “nuclear thing”. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee ruled out a meeting with Musharraf at the 16-nation Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
“There is no such plan,” Vajpayee told reporters before leaving New Delhi. But he said he would give serious consideration to talks at some point if there was evidence Musharraf was making good on his promise to curb militant raids into Indian Kashmir. Musharraf said he wanted a meeting, but he would drop the idea if Vajpayee was not interested.
Along the border where one million soldiers, tanks and artillery are massed, both armies traded mortar and machine-gun fire. Four Pakistanis and an Indian woman were killed in exchanges around the disputed Kashmir region, officials and witnesses said. India said eight civilians were hurt when Pakistan troops launched a mortar attack on Garkwal village. Pakistan said four soldiers were injured by Indian shelling in nearby Punjab province.
Two top Pakistan envoys left for Europe and the Middle East yesterday as part of a diplomatic offensive to explain Pakistan’s stand on tensions with India, officials said in Islamabad. As a special envoy of Musharraf, former President Farooq Leghari will visit Germany and Egypt to convey “the government’s position and policy in the context of the current Pakistan-India situation,” they said. Former Army chief Gen. Jehangir Karamat also departed on a similar mission to Italy, Spain, France and Denmark.
The United States offered to help defuse the conflict while the Pakistani and Indian envoys to Washington planned appearances on US television yesterday. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Maleeha Lodhi, and India’s US envoy, Lalit Mansingh, were to discuss the worsening conflict for US television viewers yesterday at 1300 GMT. Washington offered its assistance in arranging talks, but stopped short of saying it would mediate the dispute.
“Our role has been to encourage dialogue and a reduction of violence that would improve the atmosphere for productive discussions,” said a State Department official who asked not to be named. “We do not seek a mediator’s role but would be prepared to provide facilitative assistance, if the parties requested it.”
The United States and other Western nations are alarmed Vajpayee and Musharraf, driven partly by internal political pressures over Kashmir, may be speeding toward a confrontation which could end in nuclear exchanges.
Vajpayee and Musharraf last met at a South Asian summit in Katmandu in January when, despite hopes they might discuss their differences, they just shook hands and spoke briefly.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with both men in Almaty, and Moscow is anxious to broker a face-to-face meeting between the two. There were signs efforts by Musharraf to check the activities of militants were having an effect. Sources among separatist groups in Pakistan-administered Kashmir said that, under instruction from Islamabad, they had virtually halted their incursions across the 1948 cease-fire line dividing the region.
Speaking in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on his way to Almaty, Musharraf acknowledged the risks of the military buildup. “The situation is very dangerous. Around a million troops are massed along the border, and a small incident could complicate the situation,” he told reporters.
But he appeared to rule out use of nuclear weapons. “The nuclear question is a very serious question, and there cannot be such a possibility,” he said. India has ruled out first use of nuclear weapons, while Pakistan has not. Musharraf said he had proposed a meeting with Vajpayee several times “but if he does not want it, I think that in future there is no point in raising this question again.”
The US, Britain and other Western nations have urged thousands of their nationals to leave the subcontinent immediately, fearing a panic flight if war erupts. The UN yesterday started to evacuate families of staff, and plans to send home around 300 people over the next few days.
Saudi students and families have started leaving Pakistan as fears of war with India grow, Riyadh’s ambassador to Islamabad was quoted by a newspaper as saying yesterday. Ali Awad Assiri told Okaz newspaper that some 600 Saudis lived and studied in Pakistan, including 160 families. He said the embassy, working on instructions from the Foreign Ministry, had asked students and families to leave Pakistan to spend their summer vacation at home, and that they had begun to leave.
