May 17, 2002	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 4, 1423

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NEW DELHI, May 16: Top Indian ministers and army commanders met on Thursday to draw up a response to a bloody attack in occupied Kashmir that New Delhi alleged was carried out by Pakistanis.

The home ministry said in a statement that a number of possible actions were discussed at the meeting, including “continued operations against the terrorists and action against the overground support base of the terrorists.”

The chief of India’s army, Gen S. Padmanabhan, hinted he favoured military action.

“I don’t want to go into the specifics but time for action has come,” Gen Padmanabhan told Star News during a visit to Nepal.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee also held a separate meeting on Thursday with Mr Fernandes, Home Minister L.K. Advani and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, officials said.

As the United States sought to defuse tensions between the nuclear-armed South Asian nations, Pakistan detained the founder of the banned Lashkar-i-Taiba, Hafiz Mohamad Saeed.

Hafiz Saeed was taken into custody on Wednesday on suspicion that he was planning to create unrest, official sources said in Pakistan.

But Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani said that Pakistan had not done enough and lashed out at Washington for its support of President Pervez Musharraf.

“It is unfortunate that when Pakistan has not renounced terrorism there are still some Western countries aiding Pakistan economically and in other ways,” he told reporters.

“Whichever country uses terrorism as an instrument of national policy should not be helped by any country in the world,” said Mr Advani, who later met US Ambassador Robert Blackwill.

The hawkish home minister also met later Defence Minister George Fernandes and occupied Kashmir’s chief minister Farooq Abdullah. They were briefed by senior army commanders on their options.

Meanwhile, India’s defence ministry claims to have identified the three who had attacked the bus and a military camp in Jammu.

It identified them as Pakistanis from Punjab. The names given by the ministry were similar to those given by a previously unknown group called al-Mansoorain in a claim of responsibility to Kashmir media.

But Indian newspapers speculated al-Mansoorain could be a pseudonym for Lashkar-e-Taiba.—AFP