NEW DELHI, July 29: India retracted on Saturday an army claim that Indian soldiers had killed a Pakistani military officer in its zone of held Kashmir.

“No Pakistan army officer has been killed in (Indian) Kashmir,” defence ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar said, declining to elaborate.

The Indian army had on Friday said Indian forces shot dead Pakistani army officer Mohammad Hyder Turkey and two Pakistani militants earlier in the week.

Indian army spokesman Lt-Col V.K. Batra had claimed the incident was proof that the Pakistani army was involved in the 17-year-old insurgency against New Delhi’s rule in the held Kashmir.

Pakistan had rejected the claim, calling it “ridiculous” and saying the man in question was still alive.

On Saturday, Batra said his statement was based on preliminary information and the identity of the dead man was yet to be confirmed.

“The information about a major of Pakistani army having been shot ... was the initial information based on electronic inputs,” Batra said in Srinagar.

The Pakistani army’s chief spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said the officer named by India “is alive and is posted in Quetta”.

Sultan said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had “put a lot on stake in pushing the peace process with India and it is in our interest and in the interest of the people of South Asia to keep it alive.”

The peace dialogue was launched in 2004 after the neighbours came to the brink of another war over Kashmir, trigger of two of their three earlier conflicts.—AFP