U.S. ignoring India's 'concerns on terrorism'

U.S. ignoring India's 'concerns on terrorism'

NEW DELHI (Agencies): India on Friday openly criticized the United States for ignoring its concerns on terrorism a week after offering Washington "unstinted support" in its campaign to fight the menace.

In an interview to The Times of India, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said: "No statements have emanated from Washington to suggest that the US, though appreciative of India's offer to support its war against terrorism, was in a mood to focus on India's bitter experience of terrorist activities on its soil."

An armed Muslim insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir has claimed more than 35,000 lives since 1989.

India accuses Pakistan of training, arming and funding Islamic militant groups operating in Kashmir. Islamabad refutes the charge, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the rebels.

India tightened security both within the country and along its borders on Friday amid a growing sense of foreboding about the potential fallout of the crisis in Afghanistan.

Defense officials said troops were on alert along the border with Pakistan in the northern states of Punjab and Rajasthan, while even in the northeast near Bangladesh police were hunting out militants to head off any unrest.

One Indian defense official reported a build-up of troops on the Pakistani side of the border in Punjab, though in Pakistan, a military spokesman said there were no troop movements and no change on its international borders with India.

Officials said late on Thursday that police had arrested five activists from a Muslim student organization in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh for promoting communal unrest.

Commenting on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's charge that India was seeking to exploit the situation to damage Islamabad's interests, Vajpayee said "the allegations were along expected lines."

"What concerns him (Musharraf) is not terrorism. It is Kashmir.

"How can he be concerned about terrorism? He has promoted it."

The premier's strongly worded comments did not evoke any surprise from analysts in New Delhi.

Another former foreign secretary, S.K. Singh, described Vajpayee's statements on Pakistan as "accurate and precise."

"Musharraf's attitude towards India is always conditioned by Kashmir. So what the prime minister said is very correct," Singh said.

"Vajpayee was serving notice to Islamabad that if they go abusive, the India-Pakistan dialogue will be impeded."

In his interview, Vajpayee also alleged the United States had not declared Pakistan a terrorist state, a longstanding demand by New Delhi, because "it has not seen terrorism in this part of the world in the correct perspective."

"It is for America to decide whether terrorism is a global phenomenon or whether it is restricted to just one individual," Vajpayee said, referring to the US campaign to catch Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the attacks that killed more than 6,300 in the United States.

"America alone can determine whether it will address the symptom of terrorism or the system of terrorism," Vajpayee was quoted as saying.

"America will have to look at the sanctuaries provided to terrorists, at the training camps, at the arms and the money flowing into the hands of the terrorists if it wants to get rid of terrorism, root and branch."

According to Kanti Bajpai, a professor at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, India's offer of assistance to Washington came "too fast, too unconditionally."