Instead guess where I ended up discussing the fall of Tiger Hill? In an Arab tent pitched in the middle of rolling sand dunes in the part of the Sahara desert closest to the city of Laayoune on the Atlantic Ocean.

Why did I come here? Well, I thought I would gauge the post-Kargil, Kosovo mood in Europe, check out opinion in Morocco which some years ago was the chairman of the OIC, possibly cover the Organisation of African Unity Summit in Algiers and return in time for the victory celebrations and prepare for the general elections.

The meeting with theMoroccan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohamed Znined in Rabat was revealing. The Indian ambassador had met him twice. He was therefore in total grasp of the Indian case on Kargil. But the Pakistani ambassador had met him too. Obviously, Znined was not going to tell me, on the record, that one of the ambassadors told the truth while the other lied.

But if you listen to the leaders in Morocco (indeed, the Arab world), their appreciation of the Indo-Pak equation has undergone an organic change.Growing impatience and a sense of boredom with Pakistan's monotonous incantation of that solitary theme - Kashmir, Bharat, Kashmir, Bharat - is being replaced by a silent, unstated rejection of the Pakistani case. What registers now is not the Kashmir issue, but the dangers of Talibanisation of which Pakistan is the core. On the hills around Kargil, on the Indian side of the LoC, are Afghan Mujahideen and Pakistan regulars both fired by the same fundamentalist zeal.

It is the brand of unreasonable,intolerant,political Islam which, while consolidating itself in Pakistan, threatens to infect the entire region - Central Asia via the Farghana valley, Xinjiang in China and of course our own areas in Kashmir. This brand of Islamic fundamentalism is seen as a danger not only by the West but even in most of the Muslim world.

Mind you, I have myself been generally sceptical of the term fundamentalism. It was given currency under certain circumstances by the west after post-1973 quadrupling of Arab oil prices which generated extraordinary cash flows into hands not skilled in shrewd investment. A good deal of this astounding wealth was channelled into the financing of Islamic projects worldwide, including Gen. Zia ulHaq's Nizam e Mustafa in Pakistan.

Those were the days when Marks and Spencers, indeed, even Harrods, set up signs in Arabic and fancy London hotels provided kitchen facilities for camel's meat. The Anti-Christ was not just knocking at the gate: he had moved in. That was when the term fundamentalism wasgiven currency.

The success of the Islamic revolution in Iran provided the images, custom made, for the projection of "fundamentalism" on the move. The Saur revolution in Afghanistan and the subsequent Soviet invasion created a huge dilemma for the west, but Islamic energy was mobilised to combat Soviet expansion.

Thus fundamentalism in Afghanistan was endorsed by the Americans, financed by the Saudis (as a counterweight to Iranian Shiaism) and executed by the ISI in Pakistan. The Soviets having been defeated, this energised body of fundamentalism is now the spare talent to plague us in Kashmir, Central Asia, Egypt and even as far as the World Trade Centre in New York.

Time has altered the picture in Iran, the Middle East and the Maghreb. Surely, the fundamentalist energy in Afghanistan would have been tamed over a period of time.

But what perpetuates that energy and expands its area of operations is the nature of the Pakistani state. The authorship of this state is in hands which see implacablehostility to India as a pre-condition for the state's existence.

In this framework, Kashmir comes in handy as the focus of contention. A message that is gradually sinking in with western and Arab interlocutors is this: Pakistan is more interested in the Kashmir issue than in Kashmir.In fact, in that Arab tent in the dunes, discussion turned to Kargil because one of the young men in the far-corner had switched on his Grundig transistor broadcasting details from Kargil. I was surprised with the sophistication of the response by the men in the tent even as a gorgeous woman with gentle features made tea with elegant gestures, her head modesty covered.

Soon it was prayer time. Each one of them walked up a dune and faced Mecca for namaz with picturesque piety. It was a holy composition, far removed from the images of political menace disguised as Islam violating the peace in Kargil.