PAKISTAN: Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf raised tensions with nuclear rival India yesterday by declaring that he had been ready to use atomic weapons if New Delhi had declared war when tensions between the neighbours was spiralling earlier this year.
"I personally conveyed messages to \ Prime Minister Vajpayee through every international leader who came to Pakistan that if Indian troops moved a single step across the international border or the Line of Control [in northern disputed Jammu and Kashmir state\] they should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan," Gen Musharraf told air force veterans and military officers in the Pakistani southern port city of Karachi.
But Mr Musharraf's spokesman later said did had not threatened India with nuclear attack. The president had been misinterpreted when he spoke of using non-conventional warfare if Indian forces attacked, Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi told the BBC. He said the president was predicting that the people of Pakistan would join the troops in repulsing any Indian invasion.
The neighbours have fought three wars and an 11-week military engagement since independence 55 years ago.
Last December they mobilised over one million troops, backed by missiles, armoured columns and heavy artillery, following the suicide strike by gunmen on the Indian parliament in which 14 people, including the attackers, died.
India blamed Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence for launching the attack, and placed its fighter squadrons on alert and deployed a naval task force in the Arabian Sea within striking distance of Karachi. Pakistan also readied for war.
War clouds gathered once again in May after Pakistani-backed gunmen attacked a garrison in Jammu in which 31 people, including 11 women and 11 children, died.
However, Western countries, led by the US and fearing that an India-Pakistan war could escalate to a nuclear exchange, prevailed on both sides to exercise restraint and managed to defuse the crisis.
After a 10-month military standoff, Delhi began pulling back its troops from the border and Pakistan followed.