US State Dept acknowledges Pak role in Kashmir

8220;The Indian and Pakistani Governments each claim that the intelligence service of the other country sponsors bombings on its territory,8221; it adds.

8220;In the wake of US missile strikes on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan,8221; it points out, 8220;Several Pakistani-based Kashmiri militant groups vowed revenge for casualties their groups suffered.8221;

The report refers to a press conference held in Islamabad in November by former Harkat-ul-Ansar and current Harakat-ul-Mujahidin leader FazlurRehman Khahil in which he reportedly vowed to kill one hundred Americans for one Muslim.

The State Department document says that security problems persisted in India in 1998 because of ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir and shifted their tactics from bombings to targeted killings, including the massacres of Kashmiri villagers.

In April the massacres spilled over to Udhampur district, where 28 villagers died in two simultaneous attacks. Elsewhere in India, election-related violence at the beginning of 1998 claimed more than 150 lives. In an effort to disrupt a Bharatiya Janata Party rally on February 14, Islamic militants in Coimbatore Tamil Nadu conducted a series of bombings that killed 50 and wounded more than 200, it adds.