HELD SRINAGAR: India's deputy home minister on Wednesday said cross-border military strikes on Muslim guerrilla camps in Pakistan were one of the options in New Delhi's arsenal to combat freedom struggle in Kashmir.
"Striking terrorist camps in PoK (Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir) has always been a possibility. This has been one of the options," I.D. Swami told the private SAB TV network. His comments came two days after a devastating suicide bomb attack by militants at the state legislature in occupied Kashmir left 38 people dead and around 60 injured.
Swami, however, said any cross-border action ordered by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee would only come after consultations with national political parties. Meanwhile, Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani held a series of high-level meetings in Srinagar on Wednesday to revamp security following the attack.
Speaking to reporters, Advani said since Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad Islamic guerrilla force had claimed responsibility for Monday's bombing, Islamabad must hand over its leader to India. "Pakistan has disassociated itself from Jaish-e-Mohammad but Pakistani rulers cannot deny that its leader Masood Azhar is in Pakistan and if they are earnest in fighting terrorism, let this leader be handed over to India so that he is brought to justice." Following the initial claim, Jaish-e-Mohammad distanced itself from the bombing.
Masood Azhar was among five imprisoned militants whom India freed in 1999 in a swap for 129 passengers of an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Afghanistan. Advani said Jaish-e-Mohammed's claim was audacious. "In case of the September 11 attacks in the US, the American government blamed the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Osama disowned responsibility for what had happened. "But in sharp contrast, Jaish, a terrorist organisation based in Pakistan, publicly owned responsibility for this outrageous attack," Advani said.
He reiterated India's demand that the United States place Jaish-e-Mohammed on its list of groups or individuals whose assets it froze last week as part of its war on terrorism. Advani visited the partially destroyed state legislature in held Srinagar and said its bombing was as meticulously planned as the airborne attacks in the United States.
Indian troops in held Srinagar were put on high alert for Advani's visit. Advani, the number two in the Indian government, also addressed Kashmiri lawmakers at a heavily guarded hotel and chaired a security meeting of police, army, paramilitary and civil administration officials.
The country's junior foreign affairs minister Omar Abdullah also said he was personally in favour of covert operations to smash training grounds for militants. And his father, occupied Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, wept as he demanded retaliation for the suicide bombing at the state's legislative assembly. "Enough is enough," he said. "The time has come to wage a war against Pakistan, destroy militant camps."
India has toyed in the past with the idea of "hot pursuit" of militants into Pakistan, but even during a Kargil conflict in 1999 its troops stopped at the military Line of Control dividing Kashmir.
Analysts say it is also under pressure from Washington to hold off doing anything which might destabilise Pakistan. New Delhi has nonetheless become increasingly frustrated by what it sees as Washington's focus on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban in its new war on terrorism -- and wants recognition of the "cross-border terrorism" it accuses Pakistan of engineering in held Kashmir.