KAZAKHSTAN: The military confrontation between India and Pakistan continued yesterday despite efforts by President Vladimir Putin of Russia to defuse the situation at a regional summit in Kazakhstan. Pakistan gave a lukewarm response to India's surprise proposal to jointly patrol the frontier in disputed Jammu and Kashmir state on the ground that the idea was unworkable.
The proposal from India's Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, at a press conference before leaving the Kazak capital, Almaty, was considered a breakthrough.
However, a statement from Islamabad declared: "Given the state of Pakistan-India relations, mechanisms for joint patrolling are unlikely to work." Pakistan wants United Nations or independent foreign observers along the Line of Control dividing the disputed principality to verify Indian claims of trans-border crossings by Muslim insurgents.
"All proposals can be discussed as soon as India signifies its willingness to resume a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan," the statement said. India is opposed to UN or overseas monitors on the Kashmir frontier and declined formal talks with Islamabad until it stopped its "proxy war " in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Mr Vajpayee, however, ruled out talks with Pakistan until it acted on pledges to crack down on Islamic militants.
Over one million Indian and Pakistani troops have been massed on their 2,000-mile long border for nearly six months in a heightened state of alert following a suicide attack on the parliament in Delhi last December and an army garrison in Jammu last month.
Mr Putin tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting between Mr Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf at the 16-nation Almaty conference.
Meanwhile, a visit by the US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Richard Armitage, to Islamabad and Delhi starts tomorrow, ahead of Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld's peace mission to the region next week.
Pakistan's chilling threats to use nuclear weapons in the event of war have sent shivers across the country, with many Indian planning on fleeing to distant places should hostilities break out.
While Gen Musharraf rowed back from this aggressive posture in an interview to CNN last week, graphic accounts in magazines and television discussions on the aftermath of a nuclear strike are driving the message home that India and Pakistan are on " nuclear notice ".
"The one reality slowly dawning across India is that the country must learn to live under the nuclear shadow cast by Delhi and Islamabad," a business consultant Mr Dorab Sopariwala said. It will become a part of our lives, he added.
A steady exodus of well-off Indians to the West has already begun, while others are beginning to migrate to the hilly regions, believing them to be immune from a nuclear fall-out.
"I'm petrified," Ms Malvika Rajkotia-Luthra, a leading Delhi lawyer said. "I am beginning to wonder why I work and invest my money when it's all going to go up in smoke in a nuclear mushroom," she said. "But my primary concern is for my children and their future," she added as she made arrangements to leave for Simla, the former colonial summer capital 200 miles north of Delhi.
Her two children aged six and seven are equally terrified of the impending nuclear conflict, which they see discussed frequently on television and by their mother's friends.
"Why should they fight with nuclear weapons when they can fight with their hands," said Tejas Rajkotia-Luthra, brandishing his battery-operated "Rambo" Tommy gun..
"I wish I could go to Vajpayee's house and ask him not to have a nuclear war over Kashmir. I would also tell him to settle Kashmir and stop all talk of war, " Adya, his seven-year-old sister emphatically declared.