Pakistan's missile test stacks odds against Kashmir peace

Luke Harding in Srinagar and Jason Burke report on how mistrust and confusion have turned Kashmir's bitter border dispute into a crisis that threatens millions.

HIGH ON the glaciers, the blast of the artillery sends big, black crows cawing and circling in the thin air. Below them the gun crews labour to reload, moving slowly in the altitude and the cold. Then, with a gout of orange flame and black smoke stark against the ice and rock, another shell flies across an invisible frontier. Kashmir is at war again.

Last week batteries of artillery and mortars all along the 700-mile 'line of control' separating the parts of the remote former kingdom now controlled by India and Pakistan fought a vicious battle. The casualties - and the targets - were rarely military. Instead, 20 villagers were killed, hundreds of homes destroyed and thousands made homeless.

By yesterday, with the Pakistani government conducting medium-range missile tests, the shelling had spread to areas previously untouched by fighting. Now the guns on the Siachen glacier, in the plains beneath the Kashmir valley and the fertile, heat-stricken plains of the Punjab are rarely silent. The fear is that the escalation cannot be stopped.

Close to a million soldiers are nose to nose along the border. Pakistan is threatening to call back troops committed to the war against al-Qaeda on its western frontier, and even those on peacekeeping duties overseas. India has kicked out Pakistan's High Commissioner and despatched five warships to the Arabian Sea. Both states are nuclear powers and have fought three major wars - and several smaller ones - since becoming independent more than 50 years ago. Yesterday Pakistan tested a nuclear capable missile able to strike India's capital. Neither state responded to President Vladimir Putin's call to talk at a summit next week.

So far the carnage has been worst near the border close to the Indian city of Jammu. Witnesses said that, after Islamic militants killed 35 people in an attack on an army camp this month, enraged soldiers on the Indian side 'went berserk', sending hundreds of mortar shells into Pakistan, where the militants are believed to have been trained and armed. The frontline is now a tangle of damaged houses, burnt trees, abandoned shops and deserted lanes.

Military planners in New Delhi admit that the 46C heatwave makes any offensive campaigning impossible for several weeks. But war still could be close. On Tuesday, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will arrive in Islamabad for talks. On Wednesday he will arrive in Delhi. 'We have to get things to cool down,' a Foreign Office source said .

Much of the confusion has been sown by the man who would have to order the start of the war. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India's 75-year-old Prime Minister, has been giving out conflicting signals.

He first told the world he would no longer tolerate 'cross-border terrorism' - a reference to Pakistan-backed Islamic militants who have killed thousands of servicemen and civilians in India in the past decade and are suspected of carrying out a raid on India's parliament in which 14 died, including the attackers, in December. Last Monday Vajpayee sent a letter to George W. Bush saying that India, which had exercised restraint for months in the hope that Pakistan would end the violence, was losing patience. In particular, he told Bush that more than 3,000 Muslim terrorists were regrouping just over the border from Indian-controlled Kashmir, a US official said.

On Wednesday Vajpayee told soldiers to be ready for a 'decisive battle'. But a day later he rowed back, saying: 'Sometimes the skies are clear, but lightning still strikes. I hope it will not.'

Yesterday he was back to being bellicose: 'We have waited for far too long and our wait is nearing its end.'

It may be that India's right-wing Hindu nationalist-led government is playing a very dangerous game of bluff. Though Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, said he would not allow Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to be used as a 'terrorist' base, Vajpayee was 'disappointed' by the response, pointing out that Musharraf had said the same thing in January. 'Promises were made. They were not implemented. Words must be matched by deeds,' he said.

Vajpayee, known for his Sanskrit poetry as well as his political skill, is no warmonger and many analysts believe he wants to use international diplomatic pressure to force Musharraf into clamping down still further on the militants. During his tenure as Prime Minister, he has hinted several times that he wants to solve the problem of Kashmir. After a cabinet meeting on Wednesday night, sources indicated that India would give Pakistan two months to deliver. If there were no more attacks, and crucial local elections in Kashmir in September passed off peacefully, New Delhi would quietly pull back.

But Vajpayee and the hardline Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party that he leads are under intense domestic pressure. Now heading a fractious coalition government, the party is in deep electoral trouble. It has lost control of several key states and is heading for defeat in India's next general election in 2004. Over the past three months it has been criticised for its complicity in the massacre of more than 2,000 Muslims in the western state of Gujarat. The prospect of a war with Pakistan has banished Gujarat from the front pages. A swift punitive military raid against Pakistan might also re-enthuse disenchanted Hindu voters.

But even within the government support for a strike is unlikely to be unanimous. Though India's senior generals and the Interior Minister, L. K. Advani, are hawkish, George Fernandes, the Defence Minister, is believed to be opposed to any hasty military action.

Vajpayee, who this weekend is in the Himalayan hill resort of Manali for 'a holiday', will be listening carefully to the United States and, though to a far less extent, European politicians.

Since late last year India has been acutely jealous of Pakistan's starring part in the war on terrorism and has felt that its own strategic role as America's key ally in the region has been usurped. Suddenly New Delhi is the centre of attention again. Though Straw will be received politely, the most crucial visit will be that of Richard Armitage, the influential US Deputy Secretary of State, who arrives in early June.

'Just being courted by Bush and the big boys could be enough to soothe Indian egos. At the end of the day that is what a lot of this is about: egos and men with nuclear weapons,' said one Western diplomat. Yesterday's invitation from Putin to talk to the Pakistanis in Kazakhstan may not be accepted, but will have been carefully noted.

The problem Vajpayee faces is how to respond to another militant attack. Failure to declare war would appear an act of weakness, domestically and internationally. It is this scenario - and the prospect of the war 'going nuclear' - that most alarms observers.

At this time of year the valleys around Srinagar are full of poppies and Himalayan flowers. From the high-security airport the road winds through narrow streets - and past hundreds of heavily armed Indian soldiers in flak jackets. But this weekend - despite a four-day strike called to protest the assassination of moderate Kashmir separatist leader Abdul Ghani Lone - the streets of Srinagar were busy. Beautiful young women carried shopping and gaunt old men drank tea in smoky wooden booths. A city well used to violence remained calm.

Since the revolt against Indian rule began in 1989, about 50,000 people have died - militants, civilians and soldiers. But the predominantly Muslim population is now profoundly tired of fighting.

'There has to be an honourable way out for people in this state,' Mehbooba Mufti, one of Kashmir's few women politicians, said. 'They are fed up with the gun.'