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India, Pakistan mass 1m troops along borders

UN chief, US, UK, China & EU call for restraint amid war fears

AP, Jammu
A fierce exchange of gunfire between Indian and Pakistani soldiers killed five civilians yesterday, hours before the Indian prime minister visited the disputed Kashmir amid fears of another war between the nuclear rivals.
Three villagers were killed and another seven wounded as the two armies traded mortar and smallarms fire in Rajouri, a Kashmir district on the international border, said an Indian army spokesman, Maj Animesh Trivedi.
Elsewhere yesterday, suspected Islamic militants blew up an army vehicle in Bhaderwah, wounding four soldiers, two of them critically, police said. The ambush occurred in the Doda district, 200 kilometres northeast of Jammu.
The two nations have sent about one million soldiers to their frontier as the dispute flared anew over the disputed Himalayan region.
Government officials say prime minister Atal Behari Vaypayee's visit to Kashmir is aimed at boosting morale of troops and to signal India's resolve to counter what it considers Pakistan's unwillingness to rein in religious militancy in Kashmir.
Some analysts say part of the prime minister's agenda is political and is being conducted with an eye
on state elections due in September/October.
But some well-informed analysts believe India is already taking steps towards war, while Home Affairs Minister L K Advani, according to press reports yesterday, has confirmed the army had been told to consult the War Book -- a classified document which gives guidelines to the armed forces before they go into battle.
In a sign of increasing preparedness for war, India's top military brass toured other parts of the tense frontier with Pakistan on Monday, while in Islamabad Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has called a joint session of his cabinet and the National Security Council
today to discuss the situation.
The international community has been trying to counter the warmongering, with the United States and China urging India and Pakistan to keep diplomatic channels open.
Britain and the European Union also urged both sides to exercise restraint.
Washington will send Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the region later this month to try to defuse the crisis .
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressing concern also called on the rival powers to "exercise maximum restraint to avert a further escalation of tensions."
In London Pakistan's High Commissioner Abdul Kader Jaffar
told BBC that India and Pakistan were 'very close' to war over Kashmir.
He said the international community should be aware of the seriousness of the standoff between the two nuclear rivals and should exercise its influence to calm the situation.
Vajpayee is slated to spend three days in Kashmir with a visit to a military hospital where some of the 50 or so people injured in the attack on the Kaluchak army base are recovering. A total of 35 people died in the assault.
He is expected to hold meetings today in Srinagar with political parties. On Thursday, Vajpayee is due to chair a meeting of the Unified Headquarters, a body comprising military chiefs, security advisers and political leaders which meets periodically to decide military and counter-terrorism strategy in Kashmir.
New Delhi blamed Islamabad and two Pakistan-based Islamic guerilla groups for the attack May 13 on the outskirts of Jammu. Pakistan condemned the attack and denied any involvement.
Since Friday, the heavy exchange of firing between the Indian and Pakistani troops has occurred along the international border in Jammu, Trivedi said, forcing more than 20,000 people to flee the border villages in India-controlled Kashmir.
On Monday night, however, he said the firing spread to new areas along the 1972 ceasefire line that divides Kashmir, which both countries claim.
The government yesterday said 3,000 soldiers who have been deployed in western Gujarat state since March would be relocated to their "areas of operational responsibility," implying the India-Pakistan border.
The army was deployed in Gujarat after violence erupted when Muslims burned a train car on February 27, killing 60 Hindus and triggering a wave of reprisal attacks. The official death toll is around 1,000, most of them Muslims. There
have been no killings in the state for nearly a week.
AFP from Muzaffarabad adds: The death toll from Indian shelling of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir rose to 12 as firing resumed early yesterday, an official said.
"The shelling is heavy and they (Indian troops) are using machineguns, mortars and artillery, and targeting civilians," Bhimber district deputy commissioner Fayyaz Abbasi told the wire service.
One person was killed and four others were injured in the Chamb sector of the southern Bhimber district, which has been targeted for several days, he said.
The worst affected villages were Balewal, Kherowal and Malkay, where the civilian populations were under constant threat.