NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters - 1/02/02) - Nuclear-armed India said Wednesday it was prepared to use its full military might to defend itself amid threats by Pakistan-based Islamic guerrilla groups to mount further attacks on the country.

Nuclear rivals Pakistan and India have come to the brink of war following an assault last month on India's parliament which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.

"Whatever weapon is available, we will use it to defend ourselves," Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in his constituency of Lucknow in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

"And if because of that weapon the attacker is defeated ... if he is killed, we should not be held responsible," said Vajpayee, who analysts say is under pressure to appear tough ahead of state elections in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.

India carried out nuclear tests in 1998 which were followed by tit-for-tat blasts by Pakistan. It has adopted a "no first use" policy for its nuclear weapons, saying they would only be used in retaliation. But Pakistan, whose conventional forces are far inferior, has not adopted a similar policy.

Following the parliament attack in which 14 people died, India demanded that Pakistan crack down on Muslim militants operating from its soil against India and said all options were open including war unless Islamabad acted.

Earlier the country's Defense Minister George Fernandes told Reuters that Indian forces had completed their biggest-ever buildup but were "not in battle positions."

He held out hope that diplomacy could still avert a war with Pakistan. "Efforts are being made to defuse the situation through diplomatic intervention," he said.

All political parties in India are urging the government to use diplomacy as the first choice.

But Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, accused of the parliament attack, threatened fresh violence.

Security was tightened at India's famed Taj Mahal monument after Indian officials they said they had received an e-mail from Lashkar-e-Taiba threatening to blow up the landmark to love.

And Jaish-e-Mohammad said in a statement published in newspapers in the revolt-racked Kashmir region that they would carry out new attacks on Indian security forces.

"We are in possession of more deadly and sophisticated weapons and they will be fully used against the military and paramilitary forces of India in the coming days," the group said.

Hours later a grenade exploded in Srinagar, Kashmir's main city, wounding 20 people including five policemen, police said. Elsewhere, in a space of 24 hours, 18 people were killed across strife-torn Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

The border remained tense as Indian police said four Pakistani soldiers were killed when Indian and Pakistani troops fired mortars and heavy machineguns across the frontier.

Pakistan has so far rounded up around 100 activists in response to India's demands to arrest militants, according to officials of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India has called the arrests a step in the right direction.

But Jaish-e-Mohammad said it would seek to escape the net by shifting its offices into the Indian-controlled part of the Kashmir which covers two-thirds of the disputed region.

Amid mounting international alarm about the specter of war, President Bush has weighed in with calls for restraint by both parties, telephoning Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf urging talks.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to arrive in the subcontinent later this week but his government played down talk he might act as a peace broker.

"There is no Blair peace plan that the prime minister could or should take out of his pocket," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in London.

Independent political analyst Prem Shankar Jha said it could take just one more big guerrilla attack in India to prompt New Delhi to order its army into action. Several defense experts have said a conflict could end in the world's first nuclear exchange.

An Indian official said Blair would meet Vajpayee Sunday and travel to Pakistan Monday for talks with Musharraf.

Despite the crisis, both leaders plan to attend the Kathmandu summit of the seven-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation which begins Friday.

Plans for a meeting of the two men on the fringes of the summit have been scrapped since the crisis erupted.

India's Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Abdul Sattar "shook hands with smiling faces" in Kathmandu at a pre-summit meeting, a conference spokesman said.

But it was not clear whether this represented a thaw in their nations' hostility or mere courtesy, and a spokesman for the Indian prime minister's office said Tuesday there was "no chance" of talks at any level with Pakistan on the sidelines of the summit.

Predominantly Hindu India has long accused Pakistan of sponsoring about a dozen rebel groups fighting its rule in Jammu and Kashmir, part of the broader Himalayan region of Kashmir where Pakistan and China also hold territory.

Mid-East Realities

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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2002/1/543.htm