Washington8217;s bark may be followed by bite

quot;Washington is drawing up a list of punitive measures if Pakistan does not withdraw. Among them: Reimposing a ban on aid from international monetary organizations,quot; the newspaper said in a despatch under the heading Clinton warily watches India, Pakistan battle8217;.

The paper went on to quote US officials as saying that the Pakistani Army had planned and carried out the operation, quot;with guerrillas playing a minor rolequot;. Also invloved, it said, are Taliban fighters.

Pakistan, the paper noted, has so far rebuffed Clinton, insisting that guerrillas 8211; not Pakistani soldiers 8211; were involved.

Interestingly, a statement made today by Brigadier Rashid Qureshi, director-general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, questioned the demand by the US and other Western countries on Pakistan to withdraw its forces from Kargil, saying, quot;It is absolutely rubbish to say that Pakistani troops infiltrated into the Indian side.quot;

quot;The Americans are saying that our forces have taken areas at the heights along the LoC. I want to say that Pakistani forces had previously been at the heights of 14 to 15,000 feet and now they hold positions at 17 to 18,000 feetquot;, Qureshi told PTV.

An article in the Los Angeles Times today quotes Qureshi as admitting that Pakistani troops were involved in the fighting around the LoC. However, he claimed that Pakistani troops had not crossed into Indian territory.

Ironically, the clearest vindication of the Indian position that the Pakistani army is behind the infiltrators in Kargil has ironically come from Pakistanis writing in foreign publications.

In the June 17 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Islamabad correspondent Ahmed Rashid has quoted Western defence officials and diplomats as saying that the Indian claim that Pakistani regulars are involved in the LoC incursions quot;was eminently plausiblequot;.

According to Rashid8217;s article, the unidentified sources say quot;several hundred troops belonging to two regular Pakistani mountain brigades 8211; the 3rd and 4th Northern Light Infantry 8211; are deployed along the heights above Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir, actually outnumbering the approximately 200 Kashmiri militants dug in alongsidequot;.

The story adds that the troops and militants holding 15 km along the LoC have heralded the most successful Pakistani intrusion into Indian-held Kashmir8217; since the Kashmir insurgency began in 1989 and the most serious shift in the LoC since the 1971 war. It also goes on to say that one of the implications of this direct involvement would be to indicate that the Pakistani army, led by quot;an increasingly Islamicist officer corpsquot;, is again making foreign policy, with or without the support of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Rashid says, quot;many senior Pakistani officials privately criticise the Army8217;s action, but are not prepared to say so publicly. They fear that acknowledging the Army8217;s role will lead India to distrust Pakistan in any future dialogue, while incurring diplomatic ire and economic isolation from the West.quot;

He8217;s not the only voice from Pakistan which disputes Pakistan8217;s official stand on the intruders. Writing for the International Herald Tribune, Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of Crescent Investment Management, says Pakistan has at least acknowledged that quot;some rogue wing of its military intelligence units might have provided more than moral8217; assistance to the Himalayan guerrillasquot;. The edit page article, written before the Sartaj Aziz-Jaswant Singh talks, also says that the Pakistan Foreign Minister has to call the infiltrators quot;Kashmiri freedom fightersquot; for domestic consumption.