INDIA/PAKISTAN: India and Pakistan yesterday headed for another diplomatic obstacle after Islamabad rejected New Delhi's demand to extradite 20 alleged Muslim terrorists in order to lower military tensions between the nuclear rivals.
"The list (of terrorists) has been received, but there is no evidence or proof provided. It becomes very difficult to consider any action if there is no proof," Pakistan's military spokesman, Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi, said in Islamabad, a response that has incensed Indian officials.
"It's absurd for Pakistan to demand more proof," the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, said. Scores of dead bodies, destruction and bullet marks caused by terrorist strikes are proof enough, he declared at a rally in his parliamentary constituency Lucknow, 300 miles east of Delhi.
But under pressure from the US, which is aiming to prevent war between the nuclear-armed neighbours, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Mr Abdul Sattar, later stated Islamabad could "consider" using a regional convention to extradite the alleged terrorists on India's "wanted list" provided it took the necessary legal steps.
He said India would have to "justify" the extradition by making a case against each listed person in its own courts, provide enough evidence to indict them and then ask for their extradition under the Anti-Terrorism Convention of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) whose summit opens in Nepal's capital Kathmandu tomorrow. India and Pakistan do not have an extradition treaty.
Normally tense relations between the neighbours who have fought three wars and an 11-week-long border skirmish since independence 55 years ago, worsened after last month's attack on India's parliament in which 14 people, including five terrorists, died.
The Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan wanted peace with India but not at the cost of its honour and dignity.
"Pakistan wants peace and de-escalation but should a mistake of attacking Pakistan be made they would regret their decision," he told a joint meeting of the National Security Council and the cabinet.
India claimed it had proof two Islamabad-backed groups fighting Indian rule in northern Kashmir state - Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) - had carried out the attacks under directions from Pakistani military intelligence.
Islamabad strongly denied any involvement, but at Washington's behest has arrested nearly 150 activists from the two groups including their leaders. Pakistani officials, however, emphasize the arrests have nothing to do with pressure from either India or the US. They also said the two militant group leaders have not been arrested, but merely placed under "preventive custody".
The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, is to visit both countries to try and ease tensions while China has also expressed concern over the military build-up along the India-Pakistan border and asked the two sides to resolve their differences through dialogue.
Besides amassing their armies on the frontier and deploying nuclear-capable missiles that led to the exodus of over 100,000 border residents from their homes, the neighbours have stopped rail, road and air links and halved their embassy staff. India also withdrew its ambassador from Islamabad after the assault on parliament.
Meanwhile, hopes of a breakthrough in the impasse between the two sides receded with India stating there were no plans for bilateral talks between their leaders at the SAARC summit.
"I have no confirmation as yet of a meeting," said India's Foreign Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, in Kathmandu. Two grenade attacks in Kashmir's legislature in the summer capital Srinagar in which one policemen was killed and over 20 others injured have also cast a gloom over the SAARC meet.
Mr Sattar, who was seen chatting with Mr Singh at the SAARC meeting, also declared that there was no indication of any kind of a meeting between Mr Musharraf and Mr Vajpayee.
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