India Accused of Assault on Kashmir

Pakistan accused India on Friday of launching a heavy ground and air attack on northern Kashmir, as a senior U.S. diplomat tried to calm tensions between the two nuclear powers.

The Indian government flatly denied charges that its warplanes and artillery had pounded a military post on Pakistan’s side of the cease-fire line dividing the disputed Kashmir region.

The escalation of charges and countercharges came as Indian officials told Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage that Pakistan has failed to stop guerrillas from entering Indian-held southern Kashmir.

Armitage did not speak to reporters after his meetings in New Delhi, which included talks with Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes. The U.S. envoy is to meet today with Pakistani leaders in their capital, Islamabad.

On Friday, Fernandes called allegations of an Indian assault “an outright lie.”

Although limited clashes along the cease-fire Line of Control occur almost daily, claims of airstrikes are rare. If Friday’s was true, the bombing could mark a significant escalation in the fighting.

Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, Pakistan’s military and presidential spokesman, told reporters in Islamabad that Indian forces launched an unprovoked attack Thursday night across the line.

Qureshi said the assault on the Gultari sector did not kill any Pakistani troops, and he said a counterattack lasting into Friday morning inflicted heavy Indian casualties.

“All efforts by the Indians to reinforce the attack were frustrated by accurate Pakistani fire,” Qureshi said, reading from a statement. “Unable to make any headway whatsoever, and having lost dozens of personnel, the Indians, in their frustration and desperation, resorted to a highly escalatory act by bombing.”

The air assault involved three to five jets, he later said.

India’s military and Foreign Ministry called the charges “false and baseless.”

“It appears to be the standard Pakistani antic,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao told a television interviewer. “It’s true to Pakistani form.”

Lt. Col. Sushil Pramod Kumar Singh, a spokesman for the Indian army’s northern command, insisted that troops had not crossed the Line of Control “nor attacked anyplace whatsoever.”

There was no independent confirmation of the fighting.

In Washington, the State Department said it had no information to confirm or deny that any fighting had taken place. However, an official expressed “our continuing concern about the dangers posed by the ongoing mobilizations of Indian and Pakistani forces.”

On Aug. 3, Qureshi accused Indian forces of carrying out a similar attack in the Kupwara border district, northwest of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state. At the time, India confirmed only that three of its soldiers had died in heavy fighting. Despite months of international pressure to ease tensions over Kashmir and move toward peace talks, India and Pakistan still have about a million troops massed along the Line of Control and their international border. The Bush administration sees the friction as a drain on its war against terrorism. It views Pakistan as a front-line ally in the effort to track down Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

The threat of all-out war also complicates U.S. planning for a possible attack to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Critics of an attack on Iraq have cited the threat of war in South Asia as one reason military action in the Persian Gulf would be too risky.

Armitage met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in early June and pressed India’s demand for an end to what New Delhi calls “cross-border terrorism.” The diplomat said then that Musharraf had promised to end infiltration from Pakistani territory into Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

But Indian officials insist that guerrillas seeking to end Indian control over southern Kashmir continue to cross the line.

Suspected militants gunned down 12 Muslims inside their homes in three villages in Jammu and Kashmir early today, police said. Eight were slain in Duadasan Bhala, police said, and the rest in Manjakot and Ganodh.

New Delhi also charges that Musharraf has done little to dismantle the guerrillas’ training camps in Pakistani-held territory. On Tuesday, the Indian army said it had killed at least 26 suspected militants in three days as they attempted to cross the cease-fire line.

The Indian government accuses Pakistan of providing military support to separatist guerrillas and says violence is escalating in the run-up to elections in Jammu and Kashmir set to begin Sept. 16.

A coalition of separatist leaders, called the All Party Hurriyat Conference, says it will not participate in the vote because it wants India to accept that Kashmiris have the right to vote on self-determination.

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Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Washington contributed to this report.