Pakistani Admits Troops Are Fighting Indians in Kashmir

Contradicting weeks of official denials, a Pakistani military leader here acknowledged Wednesday that his nation’s soldiers have been playing a major role in operations against Indian troops since fighting broke out along the disputed Kashmiri border last month.

The admission came as military and diplomatic sources reported heavy troop movements along the Indo-Pakistani border, suggesting that the two nations, which tested nuclear devices last year, may be preparing for a larger war.

In an interview here, Pakistani Brig. Rashid Qureshi said his troops were involved in heavy fighting with Indian soldiers in Kashmir. He said the hostilities began last month when Pakistani troops seized strategic posts along the mountainous border between the two South Asian nations.

He insisted that Pakistani troops had not crossed into Indian territory along the disputed border. He also said Indian troops were suffering heavy casualties as they tried to push Pakistani soldiers off the peaks.

“The Indians are fighting the Pakistanis who seized the commanding heights,” Qureshi said. “If we see the Indians, we shoot them. If they see us, they shoot us.”

Qureshi’s statement marked the first public admission that Pakistani troops were deeply involved in the fighting that broke out last month in the mountainous region of Kashmir. Until Wednesday, Pakistan’s leaders had insisted that the Indians were battling a group of home-grown guerrillas seeking independence for the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir. The Pakistanis had said that their troops had fired on Indian soldiers along the border only in self-defense.

India has accused Pakistan of invading its territory and has rushed thousands of troops to the northern border. Three Western diplomats who requested anonymity backed up India’s version of events Wednesday, saying that Pakistani soldiers on snowmobiles seized Indian posts atop the high mountain peaks before the winter snows melted.

The fighting has raised fears that a miscalculation on either side could trigger a wider war, and the specter of nuclear weapons sets the battling apart from previous conflicts in the region.

The Western diplomats and Pakistani officials Wednesday reported the movement of thousands of troops on both sides of the border. The diplomats said the military activity was not yet large enough to signal a major offensive by either side, but they expressed alarm that the two nations were building up their forces in areas outside of Kashmir where the border is not in dispute. The Pakistanis said they were digging in for an Indian offensive.

“The threat is real,” said Qureshi, the Pakistani brigadier. “We are taking appropriate measures to defend ourselves.”

The admission by the brigadier that his nation’s troops were engaged in heavy fighting with the Indians came amid signs of Pakistan’s growing diplomatic isolation. On Tuesday, President Clinton urged Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by phone to pull his troops back from the Indian side of the border--even as Pakistani leaders were insisting that no such troops were there.

The two nations’ conflict over Kashmir began in 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain and split the mountainous region in two. They have fought two wars over the area, and they have now taken the first steps toward fighting a third.

The current clash is unfolding along the 450-mile disputed border known as the Line of Control, drawn in 1972 as part of a cease-fire after the last Indo-Pakistani war.

The Line of Control runs through some of the world’s highest mountains. It is vaguely defined in these areas, and the region’s harsh weather forces the Indian and Pakistani troops to abandon their military posts in the high peaks for most of the year.

The Indians say they discovered in early May that Pakistani soldiers had pushed across the Line of Control and set up positions along the peaks. The move gave Pakistani gunners a clear view of an important Indian road that handles military traffic in the region.

On Wednesday, Qureshi said Pakistani troops had established posts in a stretch of the Line of Control that neither side had ever occupied before. Qureshi said that no Pakistani troops had crossed the Line of Control and that Kashmiri guerrillas were operating inside India independently of the Pakistani forces.

“The decision was made to occupy posts on the Line of Control that did not exist before,” the brigadier said. “If we didn’t occupy those posts, the Indians would have occupied them.”

Skirmishing over ill-defined stretches of the Line of Control is common. One Western diplomat said Indian troops have seized disputed territory along the border on four occasions since 1972.

Contradicting Qureshi’s statement that the posts had never been occupied, two of the Western diplomats said Pakistani military engineers quietly took over posts that Indian soldiers had abandoned last fall in anticipation of the harsh winter.

Since May, the Indians have been waging a massive military campaign to push the Pakistanis back across the Line of Control.

“The Pakistanis hit first, and the Indians got the bloody nose,” one Western diplomat said.

Indian officials said Wednesday that the invaders had begun to retreat. Pakistani officials said they were holding their ground.

One of the Western diplomats said the danger of a wider war could increase sharply over the next few weeks with the arrival of the annual monsoons. The snow, rain and mud could stall Indian military efforts in the region, the diplomat said, and in their frustration, the Indians might decide to hit Pakistan somewhere else.

“It’s a very dangerous situation,” the diplomat said.