AP, Islamabad
Pakistan began moving thousands of troops to the Indian border Friday, intelligence officials said, sharply raising tensions triggered by the Mumbai terror attacks.
India has blamed Pakistani-based militants for last month’s siege on its financial capital, which killed 164 people and has provoked an increasingly bitter war of words between nuclear-armed neighbors that have fought three wars in 60 years.
The troops headed to the Indian border were being diverted away from tribal areas near Afghanistan, officials said, and the move was expected to frustrate the United States, which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants near the Afghan border.
Two intelligence officials said the army’s 14th Division was being redeployed to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border. They said some 20,000 troops were on the move. Earlier Friday, a security official said all troop leave had been canceled.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Both countries have said they want to avoid military conflict over the attacks. But India has not ruled out the use of force as it presses its neighbor to crack down on the Pakistani-based terrorist group it blames for the attack.
Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has promised to respond aggressively if attacked but reassured India Friday that Pakistan would not strike first.
“We will not take any action on our own,” Gilani told reporters. “There will be no aggression from our side.”
Meanwhile, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee accused Pakistan of trying to divert attention away from its struggle to rein in homegrown terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which Delhi accuses of masterminding the Mumbai attacks.
“They should concentrate on the real issue: how to fight against terrorists and how to fight against and bring to book the perpetrators of (the) Bombay terrorist attack,” he said.
Pakistan has arrested several senior members of the banned group and cracked down on a charity the U.S. and UN say was a front for Lashkar. India has demanded greater action, but Pakistan says it needs to share evidence backing up its claims.
Mukherjee responded Friday by saying India had provided more than enough evidence about the militants, who infiltrated Mumbai by sea.
“We have indicated to them that there are ample evidences from the log book of the captured ship, from the information available from satellite telephones and various others that elements from Pakistan were responsible for this attack,” Mukherjee told reporters.
Amid reports of a military build-up across the borders in Pakistan, chiefs of the three armed forces yesterday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and briefed him on the country’s defence preparedness. During the meeting, which took place at the Prime Minister’s office, Singh took stock of the possible conventional military threat scenarios and the counter- measures that the Army, Navy and the Air Force had put in place along the borders, Defence Ministry sources said.
“In the meeting, the three Services chiefs made a presentation on the military preparedness to the Prime Minister,” the sources said adding that the issues relating to the Pay Commission “anomalies” were also discussed.
Courtesy: nation.ittefaq.com
