Pakistan still training militants: Vajpayee

Musharraf says tensions with India have eased, but could easily reignite

NEW DELHI, India -- The training of militants in Pakistan and their infiltration into India still continued, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in an interview released on Sunday.

"There has been no change in Pakistan's policy so far as cross-border infiltration is concerned. Every day we are getting reports that infiltration continues unabated," Vajpayee said in the interview in the July 1 issue of Newsweek magazine.

A senior official in Vajpayee's office told Reuters the prime minister was interviewed more than a week ago.

On Thursday, Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes said in Srinagar, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir, the infiltration of rebels had nearly ended. The issue took the nuclear-capable neighbours to the brink of war.

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India, which has massed its army on the Pakistan border, accuses Islamabad of training and arming Muslim militants and pushing them into Indian Kashmir to fight New Delhi's rule.

Vajpayee said India would pull back it troops only after seeing the ground situation and that "it will take some time."

"There are 50 to 70 terrorist-training camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and in Pakistan," he told Newsweek.

The prime minister said India and Pakistan had been close to war over the issue.

"It was a touch-and-go affair...I did not rule out the possibility of war. Until the last minute we were hoping that wiser counsels would prevail."

For his part, Musharraf told Newsweek that Islamabad is not ready to accept the military ceasefire line in Kashmir as the international border. Two of the three wars between India and Pakistan since independence in 1947 have been over Kashmir.

He also said Pakistan may boost its military capabilities, citing increases by India in defence spending. "If they tilt the conventional balance, we shall have to restore it."

Musharraf told the British Broadcasting Corporation earlier that Pakistan and India came "very close" to full-scale war over disputed Kashmir, and that while the immediate threat had eased, tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals remain "explosive."

In an interview aired Saturday, Musharraf said Pakistan would not begin winding down its forces' readiness to fight and that he didn't care whether or not India began de-escalating its military buildup.

"We came very close," Musharraf told the BBC when asked how near India and Pakistan were to all-out war during the South Asian countries' most recent standoff over Kashmir.

"When the Indians moved their forces forward, army and air forces, that became very dangerous and that situation still remains," he said.

The two rivals went to the brink of war following a December attack on the Indian parliament by what the Indians said were Pakistani-supported Islamic extremists fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, a Himalayan province both countries claim as their own.

India moved hundreds of thousands of troops to the Pakistani border, prompting Pakistan to respond with its own troop buildup in the biggest mobilization on the subcontinent since 1971.

About 1 million troops remain massed on the Line of Control separating the two countries in Kashmir.

The threat of war subsided after high-profile diplomatic missions by the United States, Britain and other countries. New Delhi lifted a ban on Pakistani planes flying in Indian air space and said it would pull back warships from close to Pakistani waters.

Islamabad promised to stop insurgents from crossing into Indian-controlled Kashmir to stage attacks.

In the interview, Musharraf said tensions between Pakistan and India had eased somewhat since the height of the crisis, but noted that they could quickly build again if there was another terrorist attack in Kashmir or India.

"The threat of war has diminished because of a diminishing of intentions, but the capability exists and the situation will remain explosive," Musharraf said.

Conventional deterrents

Shelling has continued between Indian and Pakistani forces along in Kashmir, and gunbattles between Indian troops and suspected militants in various parts of the territory have killed dozens of people in recent days.

Musharraf said Pakistan would not begin de-escalating its troops.

"We don't see de-escalation as a response," he said.

"We couldn't care less if they (India) de-escalate or not. We are totally prepared for them and we will teach them a lesson if they come across the line of control," he said.

Denying earlier reported remarks, Musharraf said it was conventional deterrents, not the prospect of nuclear conflict, that prevented war with India.

Musharraf sidestepped a question about whether Pakistan would ever use its nuclear weapons, or would sign a no-first-strike agreement.

"I don't want to talk about the nuclear (deterrent) because it is too serious a matter to be sitting and discussing nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan," he said.

Call for discussions

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring more than a dozen militant groups fighting for Kashmir's independence or merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan.

Islamabad says it provides the militants with only moral and diplomatic support.

The 12-year insurgency has killed more than 60,000 people, and the dispute has been the cause of two of India and Pakistan's three wars.

In the BBC interview, Musharraf called Kashmir an issue of national interest to Pakistan said the threat of war had raised awareness in the rest of the world. Pakistan has repeatedly called for discussions with India about the territory's future.

"The seriousness with which the world looks at Kashmir now ... shows that Kashmir is in the limelight," he said. "This is the best way of moving forward to a peaceful resolution of the dispute."