Pakistan doesn't want war

2008-12-27 15:32

Islamabad - Pakistan told India on Saturday it did not want war and would use force only if attacked - a move apparently aimed at reducing tensions between the neighbours a day after reports indicated thousands of Pakistani troops were headed for their shared border.

Intelligence officials said on Friday that the army was redeploying thousands of troops from the country's fight against militants along the Afghan border to the Indian frontier.

Islamabad announced the same day it was cancelling all military leave - the latest turn of the screw in the rising tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals following last month's terror attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.

India has blamed Pakistani militants for the terrifying three-day siege. Pakistan's recently elected civilian government has demanded that India back up the claim with better evidence.

"We don't want to fight, we don't want to have war, we don't want to have aggression with our neighbours," Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in a televised speech.

Still, Gilani said the country's military was "fully prepared" to respond to any Indian aggression.

US trying to ease crisis

Pakistan's latest moves were seen as an indication that it will retaliate if India launches air or missile strikes against militant targets on Pakistani soil - rather than as a signal that a fourth war between the two countries was imminent.

The United States has been trying to ease the burgeoning crisis while also pressing Pakistan to crack down on militants Washington says were likely responsible for the Mumbai attack.

The siege left 164 people dead after gunmen targeted 10 sites including two five-star hotels and a Jewish centre.

The redeployment of troops away from the Afghan border also raised concerns about the future of the US-backed campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials - requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation - said on Friday that elements of the army's 14th Infantry Division were being redeployed from the militant hotspot of Waziristan to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border.

Soldiers moving

The military began the troop movement on Thursday and plans to shift a total of 20 000 soldiers - about one-fifth of those in the tribal areas, they said without providing a timeframe.

There was no immediate sign of any troop movement on Saturday.

An Associated Press reporter in the Dera Ismail Khan district and a witness in Bhakkar, a district bordering Waziristan, saw long lines of military vehicles carrying hundreds of soldiers and equipment away from the Afghan border toward India on Friday.

However, a senior Pakistani security official denied that the troops were being deployed to the Indian border.

He said a "limited number" of soldiers were being shifted from areas "where they were not engaged in any operations on the western border or from areas which were snowbound".

He declined further comment and asked that his name not be used, also citing the sensitivity of the situation.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947, two over Kashmir, a majority Muslim region in the Himalayas claimed by both countries.

Domestic pressure

India and Pakistan have said they want to avoid military conflict over the Mumbai attacks, and most analysts say war is unlikely, not least because both sides have too much to lose if conflict breaks out.

But India - which is under domestic pressure to respond aggressively to the attacks - has not ruled out the use of force.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee accused Pakistan on Friday of trying to divert attention away from what many analysts say is a half-hearted attempt to rein in home grown terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India accuses of masterminding the Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan has promised to cooperate with India in any probe but says it needs to see evidence before it can investigate any further. Mukherjee said India had provided more than enough evidence.

- AP