NEW DELHI, Feb 19: Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told parliament on Wednesday that he does not want a war anywhere in the world — not between the United States and Iraq nor between India and Pakistan.

“There should not be any war, anywhere in the world, be it between the US and Iraq or between India and Pakistan,” Mr Vajpayee said.

He was responding to a query by an opposition member who wanted to know why India does not sort out its problems with Pakistan once and for all by military means.

Despite the prime minister’s remarks against war, there was nothing to indicate any possibility of a meeting between Mr Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf at the Non Aligned Summit in Kuala Lumpur next week. If anything, the Press Trust of India quoted Indian Ambassador in Malaysia Veena Sikri as saying: “There will be no question of any interaction between our Prime Minister and the Pakistani leadership at the NAM Summit.”

Reporting from Islambad on Wednesday, PTI said: “Diplomatic tensions between India and Pakistan surfaced today with the Indian High Commission in Islamabad lodging two protests in a day objecting to the ‘aggressive tailing and harassment’ of its defence attache Brig R K Karwal by Pakistan intelligence agencies.”

It quoted Vikram Misri, acting Charge d’Affaires, as saying that the High Commission had sent two “note verbales” on Wednesday to the Pakistan Foreign Office on the issue.

“Today’s protest notes were in addition to the one sent on February 13 complaining of Brig Karwal being subjected to aggressive surveillance, similar to the one experienced by former Charge d’Affaires Sudhir Vyas two weeks ago before his expulsion along with four other staffers of the mission,” PTI said.

The protests came just a day after the two countries cleared the visas of diplomats to enable them take up assignments as deputy high commissioners in their respective missions at New Delhi and Islamabad.

(An APP story on Wednesday had reported that India had virtually paralyzed the movement of the Pakistan high commission staff in New Delhi because of continued harassment by the Indian intelligence agencies.)