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AGENCIES
ISLAMABAD, JUNE 16: Pakistan today deflected US President Bill Clinton's call for Islamabad to withdraw its "forces'' from India's side of Line of Control (LoC) saying it did not command the infiltrators. ``They are not under our control,'' Pakistan Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz said, sticking to the Pakistan stand that they were all militants.
He added that India also needed to show respect for the LoC. ``It is not just Pakistan; India is also violating,'' he said.
Clinton had called Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last night and urged Pakistan to withdraw the militants, putting the onus on Islamabad to end a three-week confrontation in the Kargil-Drass sectors.
When asked by Reuters whether Clinton's phone call was a setback for Pakistan's diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis, Aziz said: ``I think I am equally encouraged by the emphasis on defusing the situation, on the dialogue process, peace and stability and dealing with the underlying issues.''
Aziz said Clinton and Sharif agreed that furthertalks between India and Pakistan, which ended in failure last weekend, were needed to defuse the situation.
``The only way we can avert war and deal with the problem is through dialogue and that is what he (Clinton) is emphasising, and what Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is emphasising,'' he said.
``Both of them agreed that there is a need to resume the dialogue...so that this, what they call infiltration, and other issues can be resolved,'' Aziz said.
White House spokesman P J Crowley has said Pakistani forces ``have crossed the LoC in Kashmir and the President indicated that he did not see how progress can be made on this issue until those forces are withdrawn.''
A report from Karachi said that more than 100 militants today left to reinforce the militants on the Indian side of the LoC. Referring to US calls for Pakistani forces to withdraw, a spokesman for Laskar-I-Tayyaba leader Umer Farooq said: ``They do not obey the orders of US President Bill Clinton, they only obey the orders of Allah.''
ThePakistan Army has, meanwhile, put up defensive formations along the international border with full preparations for a war, media reports in Islamabad said today.
The decision to move the defensive formations to the border was taken by Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman and Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf, according to the English daily, . Gen Musharraf met Sharif yesterday to apprise him of an alleged ``threat'' from India and the state of operational preparedness of his Army, it said. Sharif also held deliberations with Aziz, along with the chief of an "elite intelligence network'' and Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed on both the military and political situations, the daily said. Musharraf also held a corps commanders conference at the Army headquarters to discuss the developments and ordered them to be ready for any situation, the report said. Meanwhile, the Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPRI) said today that Pakistan's standing threat to use nuclear weaponsfirst in a conflict endangers South Asia. India's policy has been not to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict and to maintain a nuclear arsenal to deter others from acting first but Pakistan could easily take a different tack, SIPRI said. ``The greatest risk of nuclear war in South Asia arises from Pakistan's longstanding strategy of using the threat of early first use of nuclear weapons to deter conventional war,'' the independent Swedish institute said in its annual report. The report claimed the risk of nuclear proliferation by Pakistan and India was increasingly significant. Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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