Musharraf: Risk of war with India is 'minimal'

The Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, said yesterday that the risk of war with India over Kashmir is "minimal".

In an interview with a Malaysian newspaper ahead of a visit by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who will try to renew international efforts to avert war, General Musharraf said that the threat had diminished in the last four to five days.

But even as the world waited for India to take the first few promised steps towards ratcheting down the tensions with its nuclear armed rival, Delhi made plain its resolve to hold on to Kashmir by throwing a prominent pro-Pakistan separatist leader in jail.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a leading figure in the hardline Jamaat-e-Islami party, was seized from his home in Srinagar yesterday and flown to a jail in central India. Police also picked up Mr Geelani's son-in-law and political confidant Altaf Ahmed Shah.

According to Kashmir's director general of police, A K Suri, income-tax raids unearthed "substantial evidence" that Mr Geelani, a leading light in the separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat(Freedom) Conference, had funded the Hizbul Mujahideen insurgent group with money from abroad. The police chief said the incriminating booty included a diamond-studded watch with "Government of Pakistan" embossed on the dial, besides 1.2m Indian rupees and 10,000 US dollars.

What is significant about Mr Geelani's arrest is the timing. It comes just as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is finalising India's response to General Musharraf's clampdown on cross-border insurgent traffic in Kashmir.

Confidence-building measures on both the military and diplomatic fronts are expected.

These could include naming a new Indian envoy to Pakistan (the last one was withdrawn), allowing overflights by Pakistani civilian aircraft, and recalling the warships from the eastern naval command sent to the Arabian Sea to confront Pakistan's navy.

India played down the shooting down of the pilot-less, Israeli-made surveillance plane near Lahore on Friday night. Both sides have been using these remote-controlled planes to spy on each other's front-line troop formations, and since the two armies were mobilised along the border six months ago, at least two such planes have been shot out of the sky.

Though the Pakistanis rushed television camera teams to the site of the downed spy plane, the incident has not added to the tensions.

General Musharraf was emphatic yesterday that any movement forward would have to address the future of Kashmir. He said: "The response I am expecting is de-escalation followed by initiation of a dialogue on Kashmir."

Yet the latest police action in Srinagar is a clear message to General Musharraf that even if Delhi eventually agrees to a dialogue, Kashmir's future as an integral part of India is non-negotiable. Not only is Mr Vajpayee determined to push ahead with provincial elections there in the autumn, but he will likely hold Islamabad to account if insurgents try to sabotage the process.

Mr Geelani's arrest helps Mr Vajpayee pacify hawks in the cabinet who are opposed to compromise on Kashmir. It also demonstrates to Indians that any conciliatory gestures towards Pakistan would not amount to sacrificing cherished political commitments.

The Hurriyat has called a general strike in Kashmir today in protest against the arrest and its chairman, Professor Abdul Ghani Bhat, described the police action as "a setback for reducing tensions between India and Pakistan". But General Musharraf is facing his own problem from the Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposes a change in Islamabad's Kashmir policy. If there is no major violence today in Srinagar, it will be a sure sign that the road to peace may be opening up after all.