INDIA: India has stepped up its offensive against Pakistan by challenging it to fight a fourth war since independence 55 years ago, over the disputed northern region of Jammu and Kashmir. From Rahul Bedi, in New Delhi
"Let us fight it out face-to-face. We have fought thrice, let there be a fourth war," the deputy prime minister, Mr Lal Krishna Advani, told an election rally on Saturday in western Gujarat state which goes to the polls next week.
He dared Pakistan to fight a "direct war" with India instead of engaging in a what he said was a proxy war by targeting Hindu temples and innocent civilians. He was referring to Pakistani support for the 13-year-long Muslim insurgency in Kashmir, which has claimed more than 36,000 lives, and the recent attacks by Pakistan-backed suicide squads on a temple in Gujarat and in Jammu.
Mr Advani also urged the international community to "ostracise" Pakistan as a terror state "This \ poses a grave threat not only to the common man but also to democracy, civilisation and humanity. The earlier the world realises it, the better it would be for humanity".
Mr Advani, who is also home minister, was attending a parade on the outskirts of Delhi by the paramilitary Border Security Force yesterday.
Two of the three wars between the nuclear rivals after independence from colonial rule in 1947 have been over Kashmir, divided between them but claimed by both. They also fought an 11-week military engagement along the frontier in the disputed Himalayan region in 1999 in which 1,200 soldiers died. The US forced Pakistan to sign a treaty withdrawing its army from the mountainous Kargil region, fearing that the battle could escalate into a nuclear exchange.
The two sides came dangerously close to another war last December and then in May following attacks by suicide gunmen on India's parliament and a garrison in Jammu, which were blamed on Pakistan.
Last December's attack on parliament led to both countries amassing more than one million troops along their common frontier backed by long-range missiles, armoured columns and heavy artillery. The US and Britain defused tension once again following intelligence that it was likely was to spiral into an exchange of weapons of mass destruction.
Soldiers from both sides began pulling back from the border last month.
Responding to Mr Advani's provocation, Pakistan's Information Minister, Sheikh Rasheed, warned against war-mongering. "No one in India should live under the illusion that a self-respecting nation like Pakistan can be cowed by any amount of intimidation and coercion," he said.
"It is unfortunate that Advani has again started beating the war drums. He should be aware that although Pakistan does not want any conflict, it is fully prepared and has all the means and capabilities to give a crushing reply to any misadventure by India," Sheikh Rasheed said.
Meanwhile, India's president, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who took officer earlier this year, has supported the country's nuclear programme which he said had evolved in response to Pakistan building weapons of mass destruction. "You cannot sit idle when your neighbour is developing nuclear bombs," Mr Kalam said in his address to trainee coast guard cadets in south-west India.
Mr Kalam, who headed India's missile development programme and was closely linked with his country becoming a nuclear weapon power, emphasised that "strength respects strength" and justified the country's high defence expenditure.