India Delays Sanctions on Pakistan

Amid an intense U.S. effort to defuse tensions between two nuclear-capable countries, India’s government appeared to back off Wednesday, at least for the moment, from a threat to impose sanctions on neighboring Pakistan.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Cabinet committee on security had been scheduled to decide on a range of nonmilitary measures against Pakistan, including a possible severing of air links and downgrading of diplomatic and economic relations. Earlier this week, India recalled its ambassador from Islamabad.

But the decision on new steps was postponed Wednesday night, a government source said, speaking on condition he not be named, because of the extreme sensitivity of the discussions. New Delhi is awaiting a further response from U.S. officials on demands that Pakistan do more to end what India calls its support for terrorism, the source added.

Tensions between the uneasy neighbors have risen since a deadly attack on New Delhi’s Parliament building two weeks ago by gunmen allegedly belonging to groups India accuses Pakistan of supporting. Since then, the two sides have moved thousands of troops, and reportedly, medium-range ballistic missiles, to their front lines in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

“This is a perfect opportunity to resolve the Kashmir issue once and for all,” the government source said.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell twice telephoned both Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh on Wednesday in an effort to ease the crisis. Since Sunday, Powell has talked to Musharraf four times.

State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said Powell had warned each side that warfare can “have no good results for either.” Another Bush administration official said the situation remains tense but that it appears unlikely that hostilities are imminent.

Reeker said that Washington’s concern was clearly heightened because India and Pakistan have conducted nuclear tests. But he said a conflict between two countries crucial to the U.S. anti-terrorism coalition would be worrying even if there was no danger of a nuclear exchange.

Vajpayee has been caught between calls for restraint from foreign governments and demands for military action from large parts of India’s electorate after the five gunmen attacked Parliament on Dec. 13.

Fourteen people, including the attackers, died in the gun battle outside the Parliament buildings. India says the attackers were members of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, two guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir state.

Pakistan denies that it supports terrorist attacks in India, but Pakistani police detained Jaish-e-Mohammed’s leader and founder, Maulana Masood Azhar, for questioning Tuesday and released him after a few hours.

Musharraf’s government, which became a close ally of Washington after the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, also said it had frozen the assets of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

But New Delhi demanded tougher action, including extradition of the groups’ leaders for trial in India. Azhar had been jailed in India until he was released in an exchange for passengers from an Indian Airlines jet hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1999. Later reports claimed that Azhar had ties to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

On Wednesday, Powell designated Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

“These groups, which claim to be supporting the people of Kashmir, have conducted numerous terrorist attacks in India and Pakistan,” Powell said. “As the recent horrific attacks against the Indian Parliament and the Srinagar State Legislative Assembly so clearly show, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and their ilk seek to assault democracy, undermining peace and stability in South Asia, and destroy relations between India and Pakistan.”

Srinagar is the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state. More than three dozen people were killed in the Oct. 1 attack on the government building there.

Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed had already been identified as terrorist organizations by the Bush administration. Reeker said Wednesday’s action tightens the noose around the groups, banning Americans and others subject to U.S. laws from any dealings with the organizations. Banks are required to freeze their accounts.

While supporting India’s demand for action against the two groups, the State Department praised Musharraf for vowing to combat extremism.

“We are confident he will continue to demonstrate leadership in the fight against terrorism,” Reeker said of Musharraf.

A war between India and Pakistan would destabilize the region just as the United Nations is embarking on an ambitious effort to bring lasting peace to Afghanistan, which borders Pakistan.

Like Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim as theirs, Afghanistan has long been a source of friction between New Delhi and Islamabad. India is an old ally of the Northern Alliance, which plays a prominent role in the new interim government that replaced the Taliban regime that Pakistani military intelligence helped create.

India and Pakistan each conducted nuclear tests in 1998. Although the medium-range missiles the two countries have reportedly deployed near their border can be fitted with nuclear weapons, experts have questioned whether India and Pakistan have the ability to launch nuclear-tipped missiles.

Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation, said neither India nor Pakistan was thought to have deployed any nuclear arms.

“This conflict may convince the military establishment of each country that this is time to put the weapons in the field,” said Cirincione, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Both India and Pakistan probably interpret reports that the other side has deployed missiles as meaning that those missiles have nuclear warheads on them--so they must respond.”

Pakistani missiles could be armed with conventional warheads, he said, “but if Indian radar picks up a missile, what do you think would happen?”

So far, the fighting between India and Pakistan is limited to clashes along their border and across a cease-fire line, called the Line of Control, that divides Kashmir between the two countries.

India said its troops killed 10 Pakistani soldiers in artillery duels Tuesday. The shelling and fears of worse fighting have driven thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border. India has also canceled its annual Army Day parade, scheduled for Jan. 15, because the military says it can’t afford to have troops marching in parades across the country.

Foreign calls for restraint that followed the attack on India’s Parliament have stirred widespread resentment here. Many Indians ask why the U.S. and Israel are allowed to use force to stop terrorism while New Delhi is warned not to strike back against what it says are Pakistani-based terrorists.

The military options that India’s government is weighing include what it sees as the right to “hot pursuit” of terrorists who New Delhi claims operate from bases in the Pakistani-controlled areas of Kashmir.

In one scenario suggested by Indian military experts, India’s air force could be ordered to bomb “terrorist camps” in what Indians call “Pakistani-occupied Kashmir,” just as Israel has carried out airstrikes in the Palestinian territories.

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Watson reported from New Delhi and Kempster from Washington. Special correspondent Siddartha Barua in New Delhi contributed to this report.