May 31, 2002	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 18,1423

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NEW DELHI, May 30: India is “in full knowledge” of the movement of troops by Pakistan to the two countries’ common border and is monitoring the situation, army spokesman Colonel Sruti Kant has said.

“We are in full knowledge of the situation and Pakistani troop and tank mobilization. We are in complete control of the situation,” Kant said.

Kant said India had information that the troops were being moved to areas flanking India’s western border states of Rajasthan and Punjab, theatre of previous wars between

the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

The army spokesman said India was not worried by the possibility that Pakistan might withdraw troops from its border with Afghanistan to reinforce its tense border with India.

“We are keeping an eye on the developments and we know how to tackle it,” he told Reuters.

“What difference does it make? We are fully mobilized,” he said.

TALKS RULED OUT: India on Thursday ruled out any possibility of a meeting between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf in Almaty, where they would be attending a 16-nation security conference beginning from June 3.

“We don’t see any possibility,” a spokesperson of the

external affairs ministry Nirupama Rao told a press briefing here, when asked whether the two leaders would meet there.

She said that External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had already made a statement that such a meeting was not on the cards.

As far as the possibility of a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Vajpayee in Almaty is concerned, they would share their views on the situation to further strengthen mutual consultations, she said.

Besides Russia, India and Pakistan, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) has Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Mongolia, Palestine, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan as its members.—Agencies