India Looks For Musharraf-Saddam

[Guest guest]

Indian PM Vajpayee Orders Intelligence to Scour

Mid East for Musharraf-Saddam Links to

Lay Before Bush

 

DEBKAfile reports from its sources in New Delhi that Indian

intelligence has been directed by the prime minister to scour the

Middle East and the Persian Gulf for every scrap of information

linking Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein with the Pakistani president, and

Iraqi military intelligence with Pakistan's Inter-Services-

Intelligence agency. These findings, the Indian government intends to

put before the US government as a lever for forcing Musharraf to

clamp down on Muslim extremists operating in Kashmir. If that does

not work, India will resort to military action.

DEBKAfile's sources quotes Indian circles as alleging that hundreds

of al Qaeda Arab fighters are among those assailants. These Muslim

terrorists are said to be roaming round the valleys of Kashmir ever

since the first thaw in the mountain passes in early April,

sheltering in caves. Indian troops have picked up many of these

fighters, astonished to find a large number of Egyptians and Saudis,

who confessed under interrogation that they had received their

orders, destinations, money, weapons and ammunition from

former "Afghanistan desk" officers of the Pakistani SIS.

This intelligence has been passed from New Delhi to Washington.

Thus far, the US president has not obtained an Indian undertaking to

confine any military action to Muslim rebel and paramilitary bases

inside Kashmir alone. Indian military leaders are eyeing bases inside

Pakistan itself near the Kashmir frontier - or even deeper inside the

country.

As for Pakistan, Musharraf informed Washington that he would hold his

army down to a limited military response to an Indian offensive, only

if India does not step out of the borders of Kashmir. But if India

strikes inside Pakistan proper, Pakistan would wield its nuclear

might against military and strategic targets inside India.

The Indian leader countered with a warning that if Islamabad fires

nuclear weapons against Indian targets in Kashmir - or anywhere else -

India would unleash the full might of its nuclear arsenal against

Pakistani territory – destroying large parts of the country.