ISLAMABAD (November 30 2008): Pakistan would divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier, if tensions erupt in the wake of the attacks on Mumbai, a senior Pakistani security official said on Saturday. The next two days would prove crucial to relations between the nuclear-armed rivals, a second official said, after India blamed "elements" from Pakistan for the co-ordinated assault on its financial capital that killed 195 people.
"If something happens on that front, the war on terror won't be our priority," the senior security officer told journalists at a briefing. "We'll take out everything from the western border. We won't leave anything there." The warning will alarm the United States and other governments with troops in Afghanistan, as Pakistan currently has around 100,000 troops in the border areas, and the army is fighting Islamist militants in several tribal regions.
The country's support is regarded as crucial to efforts to defeat al Qaeda globally and quell a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The senior officer described the communication received from New Delhi notifying Pakistan of suspicions of a Pakistani link to the attacks on Mumbai as "well within limits". But a second more junior, but also high-ranking, officer said Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had been aggressive and the Indian accusations had implied that Pakistani agencies were somehow involved.
"I can say with my authority under my command that there's no involvement of any Pakistani institution in any manner," the high-ranking officer said. "It's not an ideal situation for a country to go to war. Coercion is there and it's going up and it needs to be neutralised."
Indian suspicions are focused on Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of several militant groups fighting the Indian army in Kashmir. Analysts say L-e-T had enjoyed support from Pakistani agencies in the past. Pakistan denies the allegations and says it only ever gave moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiri freedom fighters.
TENSIONS RISE: The officer said tensions with India were escalating rapidly and the next one to two days would prove crucial. "They'll have clarity of thought and we'll have clarity of the situation in next 24-48 hours," he said.
The two nuclear-armed rivals went to the brink of war in 2002, but embarked on a peace process in 2004 that has ground on for the last four years. The more senior official said the Indian government had underestimated how strong Indian militants have become. "It shocked us to see the level of sophistication of manoeuvring involved (in the attacks)," he said. "India was not ready for that."
Pakistan had asked for evidence of the involvement of anyone in Pakistan, but India had so far not supplied any, he said. The Pakistani government on Saturday said it would send a member of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to India, having retracted a commitment made a day earlier to send ISI chief Lieutenant-General Arshad Shujaa Pasha for an exchange of information. The more senior official said it was unlikely that any Pakistani intelligence officer would be going to India in the near future.
