06 May 2004	Thursday	15 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

LUCKNOW, May 5: Indian forces are known to have tracked and killed alleged Hamas activists in some remote part of Uttar Pradesh before the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Similarly, they routinely trap or take out 'ISI agents' not just in Kashmir but virtually all over the country.

This phenomenon of insidious blame-game had almost completely abated after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee offered his hand of friendship to Pakistan from Srinagar in April last year. Suddenly, on Wednesday, as Indian voters lined up in the third and penultimate round of national elections to choose a new government, the ISI was back in the news.

Is it an officially backed posture ahead of the Kashmir talks to start later this month or are we relapsing into something more worrisome? That would be for the new government to answer.

For the record, the United News of India (UNI) reporting from Kolkota, said on Tuesday that the federal government had "sounded a red alert in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal and ordered sealing of international borders in these states following intelligence reports of an ISI plan to destabilize the country."

It quoted official sources as saying that Indian intelligence agencies had "exposed the ISI plan and seized several CDs containing maps and photographs of army bases and important railways and road bridges over the Ganga after the arrest of three ISI agents - two from West Bengal and one from Delhi, on Tuesday." So is the ISI stirring up something or Indians are getting jittery over something that has yet to be verified objectively?

The UNI report coincides with a more focused dispatch from Srinagar reported by the Hindustan Times on Wednesday. In a significant change of tack, Pakistan's ISI is understood to have resumed close contact with Kashmir's indigenous militant organization Hizbul Mujahideen (HM)."

The report said that until recently the ISI was known to "favour foreign mercenaries over HM cadres, who are largely local." The apparent shift is attributed to "a strategy to keep the pot of violence boiling and justify militancy as an expression of freedom struggle," the paper said.

Detailing the 'new ISI game-plan' the Hindustan Times said "foreign mercenaries are now being routed through their Pakistan- based leaders with linkages to Al Qaeda." The report is based on the views of unidentified Indian intelligence sources in Kashmir and therefore seems to reflect the view that India is seeking to, or is likely to, project with Pakistan or possibly with the world community.

The report said Pakistan's military leadership was keeping its eyes closed to the activities of several non-HM outfits operating under changed names in its territory and in Azad Kashmir.

"Several of these outfits have been banned under pressure from the United States." Thousands of "militants" are waiting on Pakistan's side of the Line of Control to sneak across when the snow begins to melt, the Hindustan Times claimed.

It said a spate of violent attacks during Indian-held elections in Kashmir recently were the work of local militants of whom none had so far been arrested. A separate UNI report from Srinagar gave a more breathtaking account of the developments there on Tuesday.

Quoting a government spokesman, it said: "Four terrorists, including two self-styled commanders of pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen, were among five persons killed in terrorist-related violence in Jammu and Kashmir where security forces arrested a terrorist and recovered two kgs of RDX from his possession since Monday evening."