India Foreign Relations Pakistan

President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan said he came to India "to see a good game of cricket." The Pakistani ruler, smiling and joking with other cricket fans, sat through a morning of sport as his national team met the Indian national side Sunday at a dusty desert stadium overlooked by Rajput palaces in this capital city of India's Rajasthan state. Later, Zia flew in an Indian air force helicopter to visit a Muslim shrine in nearby Ajmer.

The Indian government Friday rejected calls by Pakistan to hold talks to end their military standoff after troops traded heavy fire across the disputed region of Kashmir. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has ordered the biggest military buildup on the border since the last war with Pakistan in 1971, said talks with Islamabad had proved futile. "They [Pakistan] keep saying the leaders of the two countries should meet. Meet for what?

Gunmen sprayed machine-gun fire and detonated two powerful bombs Sunday at an outdoor meeting of a militant Hindu organization in the northern state of Punjab, killing at least 26 people and injuring two dozen others in the worst violence this year in the strategic, strife-torn state. Calling the massacre "a most dastardly and cowardly attack by nefarious people," Punjabi Gov. S. S. Ray declared an indefinite curfew in the area and ordered police to capture the gunmen "dead or alive within seven days."

With tensions easing slightly between India and Pakistan, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Friday that the two nuclear powers appear to be heading toward a peaceful resolution of their dangerous military standoff over Kashmir. After talks here with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Powell said he was leaving India "very encouraged that we can find a solution to this troubling situation."

Indian shells fired across the troubled Kashmiri border killed 10 Pakistanis, highlighting the tensions that Pakistan and India are attempting to defuse in talks over the disputed border area. Twenty people were injured when Indian artillery pounded Pakistani army positions and villages, military officials said. The dead--six civilians and four soldiers--reportedly included a 6-year-old girl. There was no immediate comment from India.

The Pakistani government flouted international opinion again Saturday by announcing its sixth nuclear test, and then it all but invited world leaders to broker a peace between it and archrival India. The test, a single atomic explosion in the Baluchistan desert, followed Pakistan's claim of five detonations Thursday. The tests were intended to answer the five tests carried out by India earlier this month.

The spokesman for Pakistan's military government on Saturday praised the "courageous" Indian decision to hold summit talks and said both sides needed to show flexibility to solve their 54-year dispute over Kashmir. "There are stated positions on both sides which over the years have hardened," Maj. Gen. Rashid Quereshi said.

India and Pakistan exchanged angry accusations Monday about India's claim that its nuclear rival had a hand in the eight-day hijacking of an Indian Airlines jetliner in which one passenger was killed. Reflecting the tensions between the two neighbors, a land mine explosion Monday killed 17 people and wounded 31 in the disputed region of Kashmir.

Indian warplanes resumed their bombing campaign against heavily armed intruders in the disputed region of Kashmir on Sunday as troops moved up snow-covered mountains to push the guerrillas back over the military control line with Pakistan. India launched an air offensive May 26 to rout what it says was an armed incursion into Indian territory in Kashmir. Two-thirds of Kashmir is occupied by India; the rest, by Pakistan.

Pakistan test-fired a ballistic missile today that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting deep inside its uneasy neighbor India, intelligence sources said. The Ghauri II, an advanced version of a previously tested ballistic missile, has a range of 1,200 miles, making it the longest-range missile in Pakistan's arsenal. The test was not a surprise, with analysts anticipating Pakistan would respond to a missile test conducted Sunday by India, its rival in South Asia.

Security forces have detained hundreds of members of militant Islamic groups over the last two days that neighboring India accuses of launching terrorist attacks in Kashmir, Interior Ministry officials said Monday. Pakistani authorities also closed and sealed offices belonging to the groups in many areas of the country as part of an effort to halt armed forays into the Indian-held part of Kashmir. Those attacks, plus an assault Dec.

Telling Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to back up his words with action, India said Sunday that its neighbor must stop terrorist infiltrations before talks can begin on easing a dangerous military standoff. Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh cautiously welcomed Gen. Musharraf's promise Saturday that Pakistan's government will neither support terrorists nor allow them to use its territory to attack anywhere else in the world.

President Pervez Musharraf vowed Saturday that Pakistan will dismantle the structure of extremism in mosques and religious schools that he said has bred violence and perverted Islam in this country. He also banned five militant organizations, saying Pakistanis are tired of a "Kalashnikov culture."

While pressure mounts on Pakistan to take tougher action against terrorism, India's top spy agency charges that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has done nothing to dismantle what it says are at least 17 terrorist training camps in territory under his control. India's equivalent of the CIA, the Research and Analysis Wing, has identified the training camps in Pakistani-controlled areas of the disputed Kashmir region and Pakistan proper.

President Pervez Musharraf said Monday that India and Pakistan had not yet stepped back from the brink of war in Kashmir but that recent events made it more likely that the two nuclear-armed nations could begin reducing border tensions. At a weekend Asian summit in Nepal, Musharraf shook hands and exchanged a few words with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

India's army said Sunday that it shot down an aircraft belonging to Pakistan that was spying in Indian airspace over the disputed territory of Kashmir, the hot spot in the simmering conflict between the two countries. The reconnaissance plane, which India claimed had flown just inside the western Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir state, crashed in Pakistan after Indian forces fired on it about 3:30 p.m. Sunday, India's military said.

The leader of Pakistan urged India on Monday to enter into peace talks over Kashmir, as New Delhi set a Friday deadline for Pakistani forces to withdraw from India's side of the disputed territory. "Come, let us talk," Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urged his Indian counterpart, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in a televised broadcast. "More courage is required to avoid war than to start one. Only people who believe in collective suicide can start nuclear war," he said.

A deal struck in Washington to end the border war on the Indian subcontinent failed to take hold Monday, as fighting raged in the Himalayas and the Pakistani military vowed to keep its ground. A day after Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, meeting with President Clinton in Washington, agreed to rein in troops who sparked a bloody and dangerous skirmish with India, few signs emerged that the deal was falling into place.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf stole the stage at a regional summit here Saturday with a surprise shake of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's hand, but the gesture drew only stern words from Vajpayee. "I am glad that President Musharraf extended his hand of friendship to me, and I have shaken his hand in your presence," Vajpayee told the conference of seven South Asian nations.

A longshot opportunity to get the leaders of India and Pakistan talking again appeared to slip away Friday after the opening of a regional summit here was postponed because Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf arrived late. The delay in the summit's start until today meant that a private retreat, where Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee were supposed to mingle with five other leaders at a Himalayan resort, would likely be canceled, the Nepalese hosts said.