Asia Rivals Trade Diplomatic Blows

As India and Pakistan moved more troops to their increasingly tense border, the nuclear-armed rivals exchanged diplomatic fire Thursday, with each ordering that the other’s embassy staff be cut by half.

Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh made the first move Thursday night, announcing that the staff of Pakistan’s New Delhi embassy, called a high commission, must be halved within 48 hours. In addition, he said, Pakistan International Airlines will not be allowed to fly to India, or through its airspace, as of Jan. 1.

Accusing Pakistani diplomats of spying in India and having “indirect involvement” with terrorist groups, Singh said the envoys’ and their families’ movements will be restricted to the New Delhi city limits.

Pakistan immediately responded in kind, ordering an identical reduction of the Indian staff in Islamabad and restricting the envoys’ movements within the country. It also denied Indian Airlines access to Pakistani airspace--a symbolic move because the airline ended its only flight to Pakistan last month.

The tit for tat came as India and Pakistan continued the largest military buildup along their shared border and in the bitterly disputed Kashmir region in more than a decade. In recent days, the two sides have exchanged fire across the so-called Line of Control that separates the partitioned region. And both have issued hawkish statements about not backing down from confrontation.

The troop buildup in Kashmir--long a tinderbox in Pakistani-Indian relations--began after terrorists attacked the Parliament in New Delhi on Dec. 13. Fourteen people died, including the five assailants. New Delhi accused Pakistan and its intelligence service of being behind the attack and demanded that Islamabad shut down terrorist training camps in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.

Washington has exerted heavy pressure on New Delhi and Islamabad to reduce military tensions in Kashmir, where India and Pakistan have fought two wars since their independence from Britain. An estimated 60,000 people have died in the Himalayan territory. At least half a dozen Muslim groups in Kashmir, some of whom want independence, are fighting Indian rule.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced that the two Pakistan-based organizations suspected of carrying out the Dec. 13 attacks, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, were being added to the U.S. government’s list of terrorist groups.

On Thursday, the two groups dismissed their inclusion on the list and said they will continue their jihad, or “holy war,” in Kashmir.

“The American decision makes no difference for us,” Aftab Hussain, a spokesman for Lashkar-e-Taiba, said in a statement from Muzzaffarabad in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. “We do not need an American certificate to carry out our jihad. We started our jihad on Allah’s order, and we will continue.”

A spokesman for Jaish-e-Mohammed also lashed out at the United States. “Who is America to call us terrorists?” spokesman Hasan Burki told Reuters news agency by telephone from the eastern Pakistani town of Bahawalpur. “We have to prepare Muslims for jihad. We have to show the Americans and Indians the real power of Muslims.”

Pakistan has condemned the Parliament attack, and Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said Thursday: “We will crack down on any group that was responsible if India provides evidence these people were Pakistani. But so far, New Delhi has offered nothing. Not a shred of evidence.”

On Tuesday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf responded to the foreign pressure by briefly detaining Jaish-e-Mohammed’s leader and founder, Maulana Masood Azhar, and several of his associates. Two years ago, India released Azhar from prison in exchange for the safe release of the passengers on an Indian Airlines plane that had been hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Western intelligence agencies believe that Azhar has links to both the Taliban, Afghanistan’s recently toppled fundamentalist government, and the Pakistani intelligence service.

Pakistan, the Taliban’s major backer until Musharraf threw his support behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism, has been one of Washington’s most important allies in the anti-terror effort. Washington worries that increased tensions--or war--in Kashmir would force Musharraf into lessening his commitment to destroying the Taliban and the Al Qaeda terror network.

Musharraf’s government has about 8,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan to prevent fleeing Al Qaeda members from entering Pakistan. Several hundred have been arrested.

But Musharraf is in a precarious position because he has already angered religious fundamentalists with his newfound friendship with the United States. He began a cautious crackdown on militant Islamic groups before the attack on India’s Parliament, but if he acts with too much vigor, he might jeopardize his presidency and the stability of Pakistan, Western political analysts said.

Another potential destabilizing factor is Kashmir, particularly with the deployment of thousands of troops and, reportedly, ballistic missiles along the India-Pakistan border and the Line of Control in Kashmir.

India says its forces have killed more than a dozen Pakistani soldiers, and several suspected terrorists, in recent clashes on the border and in Kashmir. At least 13 Indians, nine of them soldiers, have died in the limited fighting.

The front lines were reported to be relatively quiet Thursday, but the military buildup continued. A long convoy of Indian army and civilian trucks headed west along the main road through the state of Rajasthan, which borders Pakistan.

Many of the trucks were packed with barrels of what appeared to be fuel, while wooden ammunition boxes were stacked high in several other trucks in the convoy that stretched along several miles on the main road toward the city of Jaipur. The convoy included at least two medical units marked with red crosses.

“In the next two to three days, the deployment process will be completed and the forces will be ready for any eventuality,” Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes told the Press Trust of India.

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Lamb reported from Pakistan and Watson from Jaipur, India.