Back From The Brink

Indian warships started moving away from waters near Pakistan in the northern Arabian Sea on Tuesday, the navy said, as the government took another step to reduce the threat of war between the nuclear-armed nations.

Shelling and small-arms fire killed at least seven people overnight along the disputed Kashmir frontier, however, ahead of a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld aimed at defusing tensions between India and Pakistan.

The annoucement about Indian warships being recalled occurred a day after the New Delhi government announced it would allow Pakistani aircraft to fly over India after a six-month ban.

"Ships of the Western Fleet, which were patrolling different areas of the north Arabian Sea, have been recalled to their base as per the government decision," Navy Cmdr. Rahul Gupta said. The ships were expected back in Bombay within two days.

Gupta did not say how many ships were moving, but dozens of ships are included in the Western Fleet. The fleet includes India's only aircraft carrier, several submarines, missile destroyers and multipurpose frigates.

An additional five ships that had been moved from the eastern side of the subcontinent also were withdrawn from waters near Pakistan, but will remain on the west coast for now, Gupta said.

Though the South Asian rivals have been stepping back from their war footing, a million soldiers still line their frontier and both countries acknowledge the threat of war remains.

"We are looking for genuine steps from the Indian side, not peripheral and cosmetic steps," said Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf during a visit Tuesday to the United Arab Emirates. "The genuine step, as I have laid down, is the initiation of a dialogue on the Kashmir dispute, and all other issues."

India's government has refused to enter such a dialogue until it is satisfied that Pakistan-based militants are no longer crossing the frontier to commit acts of terror in India.

When asked at a news conference in Abu Dhabi if Pakistan would reciprocate India's overtures, Musharraf said his country had already "done far more of its share of easing the tension."

Rumsfeld planned to meet with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other senior leaders in New Delhi on Wednesday, then continue his shuttle diplomacy in Islamabad on Thursday. World leaders have been urging restraint from the longtime adversaries, as a fourth war between them would now carry the threat of nuclear escalation.

Rumsfeld offered a mildly upbeat assessment of the standoff several hours before he was due in India.

"There have been some hopeful signs," he told reporters in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where he visited U.S. troops stationed there. "It's not getting worse and that's a good thing."

Rumsfeld credited Musharraf with improving the situation by cracking down on the infiltration of extremists into Indian Kashmir.

"He has made a very firm commitment to everything he can do to limit infiltration across the Line of Control permanently," Rumsfeld said.

Meanwhile, army spokesman Lt. Col. H.S. Oberoi said an officer was killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir and three civilians were wounded in the Naushahra sector close to the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, at least six people were killed, including five members of one family when an artillery shell hit their home, and 16 were wounded overnight in cross-border shelling, police said.

Dozens of people have been killed on both sides in almost daily exchanges of heavy fire by the two armies since a May 14 attack by suspected Islamic rebels on an Indian army camp near Jammu killed 34 people, mostly wives and children of soldiers.

The two armies have been nose-to-nose along the frontier since a militant attack on India's Parliament in December killed 14 people. New Delhi blamed Pakistan's spy agency and Islamic militants for the suicide assault, a charge Islamabad denied.

India has accused Pakistan of financing and training Islamic militants who have been fighting for the independence of Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state, or its merger with Muslim Pakistan. The 12-year insurgency has cost at least 60,000 lives.

Musharraf told India's leaders via a U.S. envoy last week that the infiltration of Islamic guerrillas would not be tolerated.

After acknowledging that cross-border incursions had declined, New Delhi on Monday relaxed air space restrictions that were imposed following the Dec. 13 attack on Parliament. That cleared the way for Pakistan International Airlines to fly across Indian air space, cutting flight times to destinations such as Bangladesh.

"There is some fall in infiltration, but difficult to say if it is a definite trend," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said, adding that the Pakistani carrier could not yet resume flights to India.

In Pakistan, dozens of pro-Taliban clerics, retired generals and outlawed militant groups vowed to defy Musharraf's ban on infiltration into India. They faxed him a statement demanding an end to Islamabad's cooperation with Washington in its war against terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan.

"Jihad in Kashmir will continue," said retired Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, who was the Pakistani army chief in 1989 when militants launched their guerrilla war in Indian Kashmir. "No force on earth can stop the freedom movement."

In the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, the head of the country's largest right-wing religious party told a rally of 10,000 supporters the fight for Kashmir's independence was far from over.

"We will continue to cross the Line of Control as the struggle for Kashmir's freedom continues," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, shouted to the crowd in Muzaffarabad.

"We will not allow a weak ruler to sell out on Kashmir," Ahmed shouted, as activists responded: "We will not rest until India is destroyed."