They should wait till winter. Then the monsoon winds will blow the fallout towards the Arabian Peninsula.Kind of a bonus effect....
Posted on 05/27/2002 4:08:36 PM PDT by Timesink
Musharraf: there will be no more sacrifices
By Edward Luce and Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
Published: May 27 2002 20:56 | Last Updated: May 27 2002 20:56
General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, said on Monday that Pakistan would not make any further sacrifices of the country's "honour and dignity" as the price of avoiding war with India.
India, which has hundreds of thousands of troops on high alert along the Line of Control, the international border that divides the disputed province of Kashmir, has strongly hinted that it will launch military strikes on its nuclear-armed neighbour unless Pakistan ceases its alleged sponsorship of terrorism.
But in a one-hour interview with the Financial Times, Gen Musharraf flatly denied that there was any cross-border terrorist infiltration of India's portion of Kashmir. Gen Musharraf, who earlier gave a 25-minute broadcast to the nation, also ruled out any possibility of handing over 20 alleged terrorists - India's other key demand.
"India cannot be both the accusers and judges," said Gen Musharraf. "We have made it very clear that there is no activity along the Line of Control."
He added: "I am a military man. And while I do not want war, I am not scared of war. However the avoidance of war cannot come at the cost of compromising our honour and dignity."
In a strong hint that Pakistan would retaliate heavily to any Indian military action, Gen Musharraf said that Pakistan was neither a "walk-over" nor weak. Pakistan is to test a third nuclear-capable missile on Tuesday, following two tests at the weekend.
"We have good military deterrence," he said. "We not only have a good defensive capability but a good offensive defensive capability. It would not be responsible for a head of state to discuss our nuclear deterrent. But the level of conventional forces that we maintain is more than adequate to implement our strategy of deterrence."
Gen Musharraf's message in unlikely to assuage India, which maintains that infiltration has continued across the LOC at the same rate or higher than previous years. Hopes had also been raised in New Delhi that Pakistan would hand over at least the 10 Indian passport holders on the list of 20 alleged terrorists that reside in Pakistan.
But Gen Musharraf told the FT that some of the names that India submitted were "ridiculous", including those of people who had allegedly committed crimes in 1980. "We can give India a list of names who committed crimes in 1947 [when India was partitioned]," he said.
On cross-border infiltration, Gen Musharraf said that he was considering "unilaterally" stepping up the presence of United Nations observers on Pakistan's side of the LOC to verify the absence of "infiltration activity".
India says that Pakistan-based groups were responsible for the assassination last week of Abdul Gani Lone, a leading Kashmiri separatist, in Srinagar and for the massacre the previous week of 34 Indian soldiers and their families in Jammu.
BUMP
By Peter Popham in Delhi
28 May 2002
Independent (UK)
Pakistan has failed to offer even the tiniest olive branch A very different Pervez Musharraf appeared on the world's television screens last night. This was not the pliable, obliging figure who dumped the Taliban at a word from President George Bush, who claimed to have sealed Pakistan's border against fleeing al-Qa'ida forces and who, when that proved untrue, allowed American forces to go into action in Pakistan.
This time, in the face of India's recent threats to fight "a decisive battle", General Musharraf, Pakistan's President, gave no ground and made none of the concessions that had been expected. Instead he nailed his colours to the mast of Kashmiri liberation.
His speech was preceded by a recitation from the Koran that called on Muslims to prepare themselves for war but to embrace peace if the enemy was also ready for peace. He spoke of "atrocities" being committed by "Hindu extremists and terrorists" against Muslims in Kashmir and in the state of Gujarat, combining that with an appeal for dialogue.
In the speech he made on 12 January he promised not to allow Pakistan or territory for which Pakistan was responsible – code for the Pakistan- controlled sector of Kashmir – to be used for terrorist attacks against India. But since then, according to American intelligence reports, he has allowed 50 to 60 training camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to start up again, harbouring some 3,000 fighters training for the anti-Indian jihad. He has enabled them, with the help of Pakistani security forces, to infiltrate Indian Kashmir.
One such mission resulted in the Jammu massacre of 14 May in which 34 died, mostly Indian soldiers' families, and which provoked the crisis. But last night General Musharraf gave bland reassurances no infiltration was taking place across the Line of Control, Kashmir's ceasefire line, and went out of his way to endorse the cause of the fighter. "A liberation struggle is going on in Kashmir," he said, "and Pakistan cannot be held responsible for any action taken against Indian oppression."
Increasingly the West sees the Islamic jihad as in indivisible menace: if it is to be checked anywhere it must be checked everywhere. But for General Musharraf, as for the mass of Pakistanis, there is a world of difference between support for the Taliban and for militants in Kashmir.
The Kashmir dispute is nearly as old as the Pakistani state; the two came into existence only months apart, and Kashmir's illegal (in Pakistani eyes) accession to India was the original sin of the postcolonial dispensation.
In the "two nation" theory of Pakistan's founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, all the Muslim-majority states of imperial India belonged in Pakistan. Kashmir was stolen by India through fraud. The Kashmiris were never consulted; and when, in 1949, the United Nations mandated a plebiscite to settle the question, India ignored it and ignores it still.
Kashmir, as Pakistan sees it, is the nation's righteous cause; the "poor Kashmiris" are the Muslims who must be rescued from the tyranny of the Hindu infidel. During the past 50 years, Kashmir has been the one cause that has brought Pakistanis together. And Pakistani leaders forsake the cause at their peril.
President Bill Clinton bullied Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister, into ordering Pakistani troops back from Kashmir in the summer of 1999, to defuse the Kargil crisis. From then on, Mr Sharif was a marked man. The day after General Musharraf seized power in October that year, the streets of Islamabad were eerily quiet. The only indication there had been a change of guard was the banner on the locked gate of parliament, exhorting "Liberate Kashmir".
General Musharraf has tried to be tough on sectarian terrorism, and had few qualms about ditching the Taliban. But the Kashmir struggle is his badge of honour. Himself an immigrant to Pakistan from India, his patriotism is open to doubt; loyalty to Kashmir is the infallible way to demonstrate it.
Additionally, Kashmir has long been a safety valve for the Pakistani militants who could give infinite trouble if bottled up at home. It has given Pakistan's swollen military a permanent raison d'etre, and a permanent pretext for demanding ever larger budgets.
By allowing American troops into Pakistan, by throwing his weight behind the war on terrorism, General Musharraf has made powerful enemies. Selling out Kashmir would be a betrayal too far.
I thought X-42 only bullied women. Did he advise Nawaz to "put some ice on that?"
Mon May 27, 6:22 PM ET
By Simon Denyer and Myra MacDonald
ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India and Pakistan traded fire in disputed Kashmir 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.
But he added that "if war is thrust upon us we would respond with full might."
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.
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE GROWS
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 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 phoned both Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee 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.
Kind of like killing two stones with one bird!!!
This ain't just ego.
If Musharraf does that, he's hailed as a bigger peacemaker than Sadat and gets showered with $ and praise. But he can't abandon support for Kashmir. So how does he back down without losing face? Answer: International Kashmir Peace Conference and the jihadis have another vindication that the two-legged shaheedi strategy can work to intimidate the international community into seeing the IslamicKingdom's point of view.
The message seems pretty clear. "They" plan to wage war against anyone who resists them, in their idiologically (and fanatical) pusuits. I for one don't buy into the "Musharraf is our ally in the "war against terror" BS coming in from all directions.
Time to tell ALL radical barbarian muslim terrorists that THIER TIME MAY HAVE COME AGAIN, BUT THEY WILL SOON BE GONE AGAIN.
India, represnting a democratic government can strike from the East. The USA can strike from the South. Hammer them until THEY submit. This is the only way.
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