ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan claimed Tuesday that India’s crackdown in a border province between the two rival nations amounted to a “direct military threat.” The declaration heightened fears of conflict in the days after India’s nuclear tests.
India’s hard-line Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani said Monday that his country wanted to provide better weapons to its forces in India’s part of Kashmir.
Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state in predominantly Hindu India; India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the province and its border is still disputed.
Advani, who was scheduled to visit India’s Jammu-Kashmir state on Wednesday, said India’s nuclear capability — demonstrated last week with five nuclear tests — showed his country’s resolve “to deal firmly and strongly with Pakistan’s hostile designs and activities in Kashmir.”
On Tuesday, Indian troops trying to flush out suspected militants from a village in Kashmir shot dead four civilians and injured seven others, police said. No militants were killed or caught.
So far Pakistan has not exploded a nuclear device in response to India, despite growing pressure from Pakistanis to do so. The international community has urged restraint.
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto said Tuesday that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “has no guts to detonate a nuclear bomb.”
Sharif, meanwhile, said Tuesday, “We have exercised restraint to show the world that we are a responsible country.”