NEW DELHI, June 11: Indian warships were ordered on Tuesday to begin leaving the battle-zone in the Arabian Sea, but a key government minister warned that the army would stay in its combat mode on the border until at least October when elections are due in (occupied) Jammu and Kashmir.

“I would like to believe that we would probably like to keep a high level of engagement or rather troop deployment on the border until we are through with the election process in October,” junior foreign minister Omar Abdullah told Star News television.

“I think there is too much at stake in the Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir for us to allow a sort of slip back in the situation. I think that is pretty much the time frame that I would be working on,” he said.

Abdullah’s remarks were apparently meant to reflect the Indian bottom line with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday night.

Rumsfeld will broach the possibility of a joint task force of Indian and US military units in Kashmir, the Times of India online said in an exclusive report.

“As part of a plan to de-escalate tension between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control, Washington is considering a proposal for the ambit of Indo-US military cooperation to be expanded to allow US special forces to operate in Jammu and Kashmir,” the newspaper said.

If at all this radical proposal goes through, any American military deployment is likely to be fairly modest and will officially be described by both India and the US as part of the continuing war against Al Qaeda. There will be no reference to the LoC or to the need to verify on the ground the extent of Pakistani compliance with President Pervez Musharraf’s assurances on ending cross-border infiltration.

“The aim of the deployment would indeed be to monitor the LoC. As far as the Pakistani side of the LoC is concerned, the US is reported to be considering air-borne monitors tasked explicitly with observing cross-border movement,” the newspaper said.

India officially denies such a move was being discussed.

Meanwhile, India is considering sending a new High Commissioner to Islamabad as part of its deliberately tardy approach to de-escalate the current tension with Pakistan.

Official sources said on Tuesday that Harsh Bhasin, India‘s High Commissioner-designate to Pakistan, is “preparing” himself for his assignment in place of Vijay Nambiar, who was recalled on December 21 last year following the terrorist attack on Parliament. Bhasin has recently returned from New York.

OVERFLIGHTS: Leaders across the world, worried of a possible nuclear war between the two countries, were quick to welcome, though with caution, the announcement by India that it was lifting a ban on Pakistani overflights.