Pakistan Backs Off Nuclear Assertion

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf suggested Monday that he'd been prepared to use atomic weapons if neighbor India had invaded earlier this year when tensions peaked. But his government later backed off the assertion, saying he was not referring to the use of such weapons.

"I personally conveyed messages to (Indian) Prime Minister Vajpayee through every international leader who came to Pakistan, that if Indian troops moved a single step across the international border or Line of Control, they should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan," he told Pakistani Air Force veterans.

However, army spokesman Gen. Rashid Quereshi later said the president was not referring to the use of nuclear weapons. Quereshi said that in fact Musharraf meant that the people of Pakistan together with the conventional army would "neutralize the enemy's offensive. Nowhere did he say that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons at all."

While he did not mention nuclear weapons specifically, his reference to a war other than a conventional one indicated the use of nuclear arsenals, which both Pakistan and India have.

"We have defeated our enemy without going into war," Musharraf told the gathering of veterans and serving members of Pakistan's Air Force, a reference to India.

Tensions between India and Pakistan peaked earlier this year when both sides sent troops to their shared border after a deadly attack on the Indian Parliament last December. New Delhi blamed Islamabad, accusing Pakistan's spy agency of masterminding the assault that killed 14 people. Pakistan denied the charge.

India's army chief rejected any suggestion that Pakistan's nuclear capability deterred India from going to war this year.

"We were absolutely ready to go to war. Our forces were well located," Gen. Sunderajan Padmanabhan told journalists at a farewell function Monday, a day before his retirement. "Such a decision (on whether to go to war) is ultimately a political decision," Press Trust of India quoted him as saying.

On whether Islamabad's claimed possession of tactical nuclear weapons could have deterred New Delhi from war, Padmanabhan said, "When we assess our adversaries, we assess all its capabilities. We had evaluated it and were ready to cope with it."

International diplomacy was set in motion to bring the two nuclear neighbors back from the brink of war. And in recent months it appeared that tensions had eased, with both sides saying they have withdrawn troops from the border and stepped back from their previous war footing.

The United States was particularly anxious to avoid an Indian-Pakistani war at a time when it depended heavily on Pakistani support in its global fight against terrorism and as it waged its on war in Afghanistan, Pakistan's neighbor to the west.

Washington dispatched its top diplomats — including deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage — to India and Pakistan to defuse the conflict.

Many countries evacuated diplomats and their families from India and Pakistan fearing all-out war; other international organizations, including the United Nations, did the same. Most evacuees have since returned, although artillery and small arms fire across the Line of Control is fairly commonplace.

The most recent U.S. State Department travel warning on Pakistan, for example, warns that, "The risk of renewed tension cannot be totally ruled out."

Both India and Pakistan say they possess a minimum nuclear deterrent, although it is not known how many nuclear devices or type of weapons each country possesses.

Both Pakistan and India also possess ballistic missiles that are capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads and are capable of hitting deep within each other's territory.

The South Asian neighbors exploded tit-for-tat underground nuclear tests in 1998.

The world condemned the tests and put sanctions on both countries. But the economic penalties were lifted after Pakistan became a key ally of the anti-terrorist coalition following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Pakistan said Monday it met nuclear safety standards.

"All countries accept the fact that Pakistan's command and control structure and Pakistan's nuclear program is in completely safe hands," said Aziz Ahmed Khan, spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.

Also Monday, Pakistan's Defense Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal accused India of not completely withdrawing its troops from the Pakistani border. Both countries had massed more than a million troops along their common border by summer.

In October India announced it has begun pulling back troops from the border and last month Pakistan said it was taking similar steps.

Pakistan and India share a 1,800-mile border, a section of which is the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. Both claim the region in its entirety and have fought two wars over their dispute.

A third war was fought over Bangladesh, or what was then East Pakistan.

The simmering Kashmir dispute dates back to the partition of the subcontinent when Pakistan was created in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims of the region. Pakistan wants Kashmiris on both sides of the disputed border to vote whether a united Kashmir should belong to India or Pakistan.

India rejects the vote proposal and accuses Pakistan of backing militants who have been waging a bloody secessionist uprising in Indian Kashmir since 1989 that has killed more than 61,000 people.

Militants want either outright independence or union with Islamic Pakistan. Indian Kashmir is India's only Muslim majority state in the predominantly Hindu country.