ISLAMABAD, May 18: Pakistan is all set to seek UN Security Council’s intervention in getting the heightening tension between South Asia’s two nuclear neighbours defused as New Delhi makes extremely belligerent moves on the Line of Control in the wake of Tuesday’s militant attacks on military installations in Jammu.
Informed sources did not rule out the possibility of Pakistan asking the UN to invoke Security Council Resolution 1172 passed in 1998 when Pakistan and India had tested their nuclear weapons as ‘this resolution specifically mentions Kashmir as the source of tension between India and Pakistan.’
Pakistan is keeping the UN secretary-general abreast on a daily basis on India’s warlike actions and on the ongoing heavy shelling across the LoC, sources disclosed here on Saturday.
“We have also asked all our high commissioners and ambassadors to keep the host governments posted on the developing situation and brief them on our position with regard to India’s accusations,” the sources added.
According to these sources, Islamabad has asked the international community to use its influence with India and dissuade it from escalating the tension with Pakistan.
Pakistan has not ruled out the possibility of India declaring an all out war against it and therefore, has taken all the required steps to defend its borders and the Line of Control.
The other possibilities to meet which Pakistan has taken steps include heavy artillery attacks across the LoC (this started on Saturday); air attacks on the so-called militant infrastructure; incursion by India’s special forces into certain specified areas to wipe out what the Indians believe to be camps of militants and attempt to draw what is called ‘defensible line of control’ by taking some parts of territory inside the Pakistani side of the LoC which India believes it can defend.
Before exercising one of these options or all of them at the same time, knowledgeable sources believe, India would ask Pakistan to withdraw its high commissioner from New Delhi (this has already happened) and then it may even cut off all the trade links with Islamabad.
The Indian army chief has already said that “time for action has come” and most of the Indian leaders who spoke in the Lok Sabha on Friday while discussing the Jammu killings have supported this line of action.
After quickly fixing the responsibility of the Jammu killings on Pakistan, India has gone worldwide with an anti-Pakistan campaign. The international community has so far not bought the Indian campaign but by refusing to make any distinction between militancy by freedom fighters waging a war against occupation forces and that which is perpetrated by international terrorism the world community seems to be providing India the room to create a negative perception of Pakistan’s attitude towards Kashmiri freedom fight, the sources added.
That is why, the sources said, perhaps the US and the West want Pakistan to do ‘more’ without specifying what they meant by ‘more’ when they talk of Indian accusations like ‘cross-border’ infiltration and existence of militancy-related infrastructure.
The president of Pakistan had made it clear in his Jan 12 speech that he would not allow anybody to use Pakistani soil to mount terrorist attacks on any other country, but this did not preclude Pakistan’s moral, political and diplomatic support for Kashmiris who have been trying for the last 50 years to throw away the Indian yolk.
Pakistan is also trying its best, sources said, to dispel the wrong impression in the foreign capitals that Islamabad was soft-peddling its policy of eliminating religious extremism. This impression has been created, sources said, by the release of most of the suspected militants rounded up in January as under the law of the land you cannot keep people in custody without proof of their alleged crimes beyond 90 days.
Also, according to these sources, Pakistan has told its friends clearly that it was next to impossible to stop the infiltration of Kashmiris across the LoC, pointing out that in the first place most of them were members of divided families living on both sides of the LoC. Secondly, if India with such massive deployment of troops on the LoC could not stop this infiltration how could Pakistan, which is in the defensive position, do that.
Sources said that the visit of Christina Rocca meant for fire-fighting, fell a victim to the Jammu killings which the Indians exploited to try to convince the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Affairs that it was Pakistan which had kept muddying the waters by not stopping the so-called ‘cross border infiltration’ and refusing to repatriate to India the wanted persons in the list of 20 it had given to Pakistan.
According to these sources, India had tried first to use the Sept 11 tragedy to get Pakistan declared a terrorist state and when it failed in that campaign it used the Dec 13 attack on the Indian parliament to terrorize Pakistan into submitting to Indian blackmail by deploying troops on borders, downgrading its high commission in Islamabad and cutting off air links with Pakistan.
All this has not yielded the results desired by India and therefore, the sources said, time has now come for Delhi to either escalate the situation further and if this did not suit it then to de-escalate it, more so because of the domestic situation as the BJP government at the centre has lost its political hold on many states in the wake of recent state elections.
They said the timing of the Jammu incident was just right for the Indian government as it came handy to divert the attention of the world community from the embarrassment of Gujarat bloodshed.
India had already warned Pakistan earlier that if any incident like the Jammu killings occurred, it would exercise its right to retaliate.
Pakistan, on the other hand, has told its friends that it did not stand to gain anything by encouraging such militant activities inside occupied Jammu and Kashmir and that if at all, such incidents only served India’s purpose of gaining international sympathy which should make it clear, they added, as to who was behind them.