India, Pakistan Trade Fire After Musharraf Speech

ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India and Pakistan traded fire in disputed Kashmir (news - web sites) late Monday after Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said Islamabad was ready to respond with full force if attacked.

Tough comments by the Pakistani leader in a national television address risked aggravating tensions with India in a face-off between the nuclear armed foes over Kashmir.

"Pakistan does not want war. Pakistan will not be the one to initiate war," Musharraf said.

An Indian defense official said Indian and Pakistani troops traded moderate to heavy artillery, mortar and machinegun fire at various points along the tense 1,010 km (630-mile) Line of Control separating the two sides in the Kashmir region.

"Due to Pakistani firing, three civilians including a woman were injured," the official said.

The official said the two sides also traded intermittent small arms fire along the 140-mile international border dividing the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir from the Pakistani province of Punjab.

In Pakistan, local residents and officials said six Pakistanis were killed when Indian troops fired mortars at villages across the border into Punjab province.

In his live television address, Musharraf repeated his condemnation of what he called "terrorist attacks" on India's parliament and an Indian army base in mostly Muslim Kashmir, which New Delhi blames on infiltrators from Pakistan.

But he also expressed support for the "liberation movement" in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir and condemned Indian "tyranny and repression."

Pakistan's military president insisted there was no infiltration across the line which divides Kashmir. He also said he would not let Pakistan be used as a base for terrorism.

With international pressure growing on Musharraf to act on Indian demands to stop the militant attacks, Musharraf's speech contained no new initiatives.

An Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman said New Delhi would give a considered response on Tuesday but said with Pakistan "what you see is not what you get."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Monday there was an urgent need to resolve tensions between India and Pakistan to avoid a nuclear conflict which would wreck the subcontinent for years.

"It's a very dangerous moment," Straw said in an interview with Reuters at the British embassy in Berlin.

Straw was in Berlin to brief his German counterpart Joschka Fischer on Kashmir and was due to fly to Islamabad and New Delhi later to try to broker a solution, although he said it was difficult for third parties to mediate in the bilateral row.

"There are clear limits to external diplomacy, so I am under no illusions about what I may or may not be able to do.

"But we in the United States and the European Union (news - web sites) plainly have a duty to do everything we can to assist the parties to reduce the scale of military preparedness and offer them routes to resolve this problem by bilateral dialogue," he said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) phoned both Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee (news - web sites) on Monday.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir, since independence from Britain in 1947.

The two nations have mobilized close to a million men on the border since a guerrilla attack on India's parliament in December. The risk of war heightened after an attack on May 14 on an Indian army camp in Jammu and Kashmir state.

India says Kashmir is an integral part of the country, while Pakistan says Kashmiris should vote on their future.

The progression of postings on this topic have gotten me more and more paranoid, and are producing more and more speculation of really diabolical conspiracies...

There's no question that Bin Ladin and his goblins were hoping to ignite a global Jihad to destroy the Great Satan (i.e. you and me) as the end game in their little chess match, and I keep wondering if a nuclear exchange between India and Quackistan wasn't one of their planned moves (just for openers, in my conspiracy theory...). That hashish-sodden idiot Mullah Omar kept blithering about the "destruction of America", and while people here were (quite reasonably) attributing it to his addled condition while dodging daisy-cutters, I kept thinking, "he's too dumb to have come up with an idea like that... Those goat-ropers have something planned..." etc...

Something else... after the Gulf War, I've got to believe that, no matter how hashish-addled or Allah-deluded, bin Goatroper *cannot* *possibly* have had any illusions about the profound response he was going to get from America after torching the World Trade Center. So... given that he *expected* us to clobber Afghanistan, it must have been merely one stage in a planned escalation of hostilities... right?

Now, we have Musharraf, who really looks like a pawn in the hands of (alternately, depending on the time of day) the U.S., his fundamentalist Generals (who are without question in league with bin Goatroper and al-Quaida), Allah, and (probably) (again) hashish - and with his finger on the nuclear trigger... < < sigh... > >

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Russia is allied with India, and the Chinese are allied with... ah... er... anybody who's *opposed* to India? (Did I get that right)?

and have the "border incidents" between China and Russia *ever* ceased, diplomatic visits by Putin notwithsatanding?

I don't like this... I *really* don't like this... I hate thinking that these goat-ropers are actually capable of orchestrating the will of Satan and igniting a global nuclear Jihad, but they're certainly capable of it, if they really thought, in their hashish-fueled imaginings, that it would bring about a global Islamic hegemony for the survivors...

(boy, it sure is late, isn't it? or early? yah, okay. Back to work tomorrow and pretend like everything is going to go on like it always has, forever...)

Now here is an interesting twist.... let's assume, simply for the sake of argument, that, in fact, Russia's "alliance" with India was always conditional on India being anti-Western. Now of course, India has the most Conservative / rightist / pro-Western government ever since independence. Food for thought. Let us further assume that, in point of fact, it was the late 1950s - late 1980s "Soviet - Chinese Conflict" that was packaged for Western consumption (hmmmmm..... now why would they do that?...) and that the 7/16/2001 Russia - PRC Axis Agreement is bona fide. What purpose do Russia and the PRC have to partner? For the PRC, they get advanced nuclear technology, ICBM cover, space technology, timber, water, other raw materials and conquest routes overland. For Russia, they get capital, manufacturing capacity, warm water access, current Western best practices in manufacturing, and the world's largest army as an ally. Here is how it works out.... the Trans-Asian Axis, described in 1992 by Bodansky to center on the PRC, with members including DPRK, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and others, now has grown by the de facto inclusion of Russia post 7/16/2001. Now the Axis, with the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and the world's largest army, is the gravest foe ever to face Western Civilization. My only question is, what will the West do if / when the Axis makes the first blackmail moves?

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