Indian Army lacked ammo to attack Pakistan: expert: Daily Times

‘India feared Pakistan might capture land’

NEW DELHI: India’s air force and navy were ready to strike Pakistan after the November 26 Mumbai terrorist attacks, but New Delhi stopped them because its army lacked key artillery equipment and adequate ammunition supplies, an Indian strategic affairs expert said in a newspaper article on Saturday.

The Indian Army could have taken several weeks to begin operations, and New Delhi feared Pakistan could penetrate into Indian territory to make gains that could prove costly “politically rather than militarily”, according to Manoj Joshi.“The 400-odd Bofors guns we bought in the 1980s are falling apart for want of spares. The 600-odd Shilka anti-aircraft cannons are in desperate need of upgrade. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” he wrote, quoting an unidentified retired general.

The same general disclosed that India’s numerically vast tank fleet was in poor shape it did not have any mobile artillery to speak of. Joshi said the Indian Air Force was prepared to strike specified targets with the Israeli Popeye – a very destructive and accurate 100-kilometre range flying bomb – and the Paveway GPS-guided bombs. The Indian Navy was also ready to use its conventional solid-fuelled 220-kilometre-range Klub land-attack missiles, he wrote.

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‘Pakistan’ in Indian state of Bihar: Daily Times

LAHORE: The aftermath of the Mumbai attacks and the tensions ensuing between India and Pakistan have spread anxiety among the people of the region, but the people living in a village named ‘Pakistan’ in Porniya district of the Indian state of Bihar do not want to change the name of their village, BBC reported on Friday. According to BBC, the villagers did not want war between the two countries and wanted to spread the message of peace and brotherhood. ‘Pakistan’ is a village on western Bengal’s borders whose the Muslims had migrated to the then East Pakistan in 1947, and in the memory of those Muslims, the local non-Muslims had named the village ‘Pakistan’.

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Sri Lanka's Pakistan tour cleared: Cricinfo

Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapakse has cleared the national team's tour of Pakistan next month. The series had been confirmed by the Pakistan board last week but its status became uncertain after the Sri Lankan interim board, headed by Arjuna Ranatunga, was dissolved on Tuesday by the country's sports minister Gamini Lokuge.

Sri Lanka's foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama announced the decision to tour after talks with President Mahinda Rajapakse. The foreign ministry said in a statement, "Minister Bogollagama is of the view that sport is an effective means of promoting connectivity between nations and thereby enhancing friendship and mutual goodwill between countries." The tour, it said, is scheduled to run from January 20 to February 25,

Unsurprisingly, the decision has been welcomed by a Pakistan starved of top-flight, international cricket. Javed Miandad, director general PCB, asked people to come out and watch the series. "Not only the cricket fraternity but the whole of Pakistan is thankful to the Sri Lankan president for clearing their tour to Pakistan," he told AFP

"I hope more and more people come to watch Sri Lanka play in Pakistan because we want to prove to the world that Pakistan is safe and secure for cricket," he added. His views were echoed by Shoaib Malik, Pakistan's captain. "It's great news. It will give us some much needed international cricket and we are determined to do well."

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Tensions rise as troops mass on India's border: Scotsman

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT

PAKISTAN began moving thousands of troops to the Indian border yesterday, adding to the tensions triggered by the Mumbai terror attacks.

India has blamed Pakistan-based militants for last month's raid on its financial capital, which killed 164 people and provoked an increasingly bitter war of words between the nuclear-armed neighbours that have fought three wars in 60 years.The troops were being diverted away from tribal areas near Afghanistan, officials said, in a move expected to frustrate the United States, which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaeda and Taleban militants near the Afghan border.

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Interpol 'not given Mumbai data': BBC

The global police agency Interpol says India has not shared any information with it about last month's deadly attacks in Mumbai (Bombay).

Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble, who is in Islamabad, said its only knowledge of what happened had come from the media.
Pakistan also says it has had no firm information from Delhi.
India says Pakistani militants carried out the attacks, which left more than 170 people dead.

Only one of the 10 gunmen, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Qasab, survived and he is in Indian custody.
On Monday India handed a letter to Pakistan it says was written by Mr Qasab, confirming he is Pakistani and asking for Islamabad's help.
The attacks have severely strained relations between the two countries.
But on Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dismissed talk of possible war with Pakistan.
"Nobody wants war," he told reporters. "The issue is terror - and territory in Pakistan being used to promote and abet terrorism."

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Pakistan warns India it will respond to any attack: Associated Press

By KHALID TANVEER – 4 hours ago

MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan warned India on Thursday not to launch a strike against it and vowed to respond to any attack — a sign that the relationship between the two nuclear powers remains strained in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

Though the South Asian rivals have engaged in tit-for-tat accusations in recent weeks, both sides have repeatedly said they hope to avoid conflict. But India has not ruled out the use of force in response to the attacks, which it blames on a Pakistan-based militant group.
"We want peace, but should not be complacent about India," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in his hometown of Multan in central Pakistan. "We should hope for the best but prepare for the worst."

Pakistan and India have fought three wars since they were created in the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent at independence from Britain in 1947.

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India, Pakistan: Signs of a Coming War: Stratfor

Several major signs of a coming Indian-Pakistani war surfaced Dec. 24.

Indian troops reportedly have deployed to the Barmer district of southwest Rajasthan state along the Indian-Pakistani border. Furthermore, the state government of Rajasthan has ordered residents of its border villages to be prepared for relocation. The decision reportedly came after a meeting among the state’s director-general of police, home secretary and an official from the central government. Stratfor confirmed the report with an Indian army officer.
According to India’s ZeeNews, the Pakistani army replaced the Pakistan Rangers that regularly patrol the border with India. The Pakistani troop movements were later confirmed by U.K. Bansal, the additional director-general of India’s Border Security Force (BSF) in Barmer, Rajasthan.

As Stratfor reported Dec. 22, there is a high probability of India using military force against Pakistan after Dec. 26, when a deadline expires for Pakistan to deliver on Indian demands to crack down on Islamist militant proxies that threaten India. With low expectations that Pakistan has the will or capability to deliver on these demands, India has spent the past month preparing for military action against Pakistan. Pressure is now ratcheting up on both sides of the border, with Indian Air Marshal P.K. Barbora, air officer commanding-in-chief of the Western Air Command, telling reporters Dec. 24 that as many as 5,000 targets in Pakistan have thus far been identified, while saying that many of the militants hiding out in camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir have already fled.

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India has not shared any evidence of attack: Interpol: The News

NEW DELHI: Interpol chief General Ronald K Noble said in Islamabad on Tuesday that India had neither shared any evidence about the involvement of Pakistani nationals in the Mumbai attacks nor given any names to the agency.

While it may surprise some, the fact remains that even approaching the France-based global agency in the past has been of little help for India. According to senior Indian police and security officials, it's neither mandatory nor a norm to share probe details with Interpol.

"Whether or not to approach Interpol is entirely up to the country concerned. Even after the role of an accused is established and he is charge sheeted, there are other ways of nabbing him, like issuing a letter rogatory to the country where he might be hiding," a senior police officer said.

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Pak, Indian air forces step-up surveillance flight: Online News

LAHORE/NEW DELHI: Pakistan Air Force (PAF) jet fighters continued flying over the skies for the second consecutive day on Tuesday for protection of eastern border while Indian air forces have also stepped up flights along Pakistan border.

According to the details, 4 jetfighters equipped with extra-fuel tanks kept taking rounds of Lahore air space on Tuesday morning for surveillance.

PAF F-16 fighters and Miraj jet left Sargodha Air Base and landed at the Lahore air base after hovering over areas of Lahore for about 8 minutes. The jetfighters also made to and for surveillance flight from Sargodha to Lahore.

The people witnessing the jet-speeding fighters happily waved and welcomed the ever-eagle ’Shaheens’ and voiced slogans in support of the motherland. The people especially elders having tears in their eyes also shouted slogans "Allah-o-Akbar" "Allah-o-Akbar".

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'Pakistan will respond in case of attack': Press TV

Islamabad has expressed its desire for peace but warned New Delhi of an effective response, should India launch an attack on Pakistan. "Pakistan doesn't want war and we are desirous of peace, but if war is thrust on us, then we have all the rights to defend," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Sunday. Qureshi's warning came as relations between the two neighbors continue to deteriorate with India repeatedly blaming a banned Pakistani group of orchestrating the deadly November attacks on Mumbai.

The minister further said that Pakistani Armed Forces were completely capable and prepared to defend the country should the row between the two nuclear-armed states escalate into a war. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain. According to some media reports, following the Mumbai attacks India went so far as to deploy its warplane to the border with Pakistan. Talking to reporters at Multan Airport, Qureshi reiterated Islamabad's call for concrete evidence implicating Pakistani militants in the attacks that left more than 170 dead.

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Is India getting ready to strike Pakistan?: Donklephant

As the luxury Taj and Trident hotels prepared to reopen for the first time since the November 26th terrorist attacks in Mumbai, The Times of India reported that India is “keeping the military option alive and kicking in face of Pakistan doublespeak on the crackdown on terror.” According to the report, “a top-level meeting was held on Saturday evening to review the security situation in the region and the state of defence preparedness of the armed forces.” Similar accounts of high-level security meetings have appeared elsewhere in the nation’s press over the past couple of days. More ominously, another leading newspaper, The Telegraph, quoted “top government sources” saying that the Mumbai attacks were “the direct handiwork of Pakistan’s military that trained and armed the militants and planned the strike in detail.”

Meanwhile, on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border, stories about apparent border incursions by air continue to appear, including an Indian report of “massive practice by Indian Air Force planes in Jamnagar” a city in western India a short jet hop from Pakistan.
This should not come as a surprise. Since the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani authorities have gone through the motions of rounding up the usual suspects associated with the Kashmiri terrorist outfits, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, that U.S. intelligence officials believe were responsible for the attacks. But Pakistan resolutely refuses even to concede that Pakistanis were involved in the attacks, much less crack down hard on the Kashmiri groups it has long sponsored and supported.
The Mumbai attacks shook Indian society and the Indian leadership to the core. Unless it gets some hard concessions from Pakistan that are politically difficult or impossible for any Pakistani government to make, India’s governing Congress Party government simply cannot afford to kick up a little dust and hope the matter will go away. It will likely lose the next national election.

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Pakistan goes on military alert against India: Malaysia Sun

The Pakistan Air Force has been put on alert over what it has called India’s aggression.A PAF spokesman has said the airforce is focused on the Indian situation and is ready to defend the security and safety of its airspace.

A Pakistan Navy spokesman also said the navy was put on alert to closely watch Indian Navy's movements at sea.Tensions between Pakistan and India are rising as India accused Pakistan-based militant groups of involvement in the terrorist attack on India's financial centre, which killed more that 170 people and injured over 200.

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What Did Kashmir Have to Do with the Mumbai Attacks?: Time

Two suspected members of Lashkar e Toiba (LeT) — the same militant group that is under suspicion for orchestrating the Mumbai attacks — were killed by Indian authorities Friday night after trying to cross the border into Kashmir near the village of Dardpura. Two AK-47s were recovered from them, along with ammunition. That encounter, police say, is part of a slight increase in infiltration by militants from Pakistan over the last few months.

That development added to the growing evidence of both infiltration from Pakistan and local Indian collusion in the siege of Mumbai. Early on Saturday, Indian authorities revealed that two men had been arrested for illegally providing SIM cards to the attackers: one of them is believed to be a police officer from the Indian-occupied half of the disputed region of Kashmir. If so, it is a disturbing development. Police in Kashmir are deeply involved in the fight against the militants who sneak in from Pakistan as well as local Kashmiri separatists. Local newspapers report that Mumbai police officers have been in Srinagar this week investigating the role of Mukhtar Ahmed, the police constable from the area allegedly involved in the SIM card purchase. It is the first evidence so far that the attackers had help within India.

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Mumbai: The Perils of Blaming Pakistan: Time

By Aryn Baker

Indian accusations of a Pakistani hand in last week's Mumbai massacre couldn't have come at a worse time for the government in Islamabad: As a Taliban insurgency continues to simmer in the tribal areas along the Afghan border, clashes on Sunday between rival political groups in the southern metropolis of Karachi killed 13 people and wounded 70. The country is on the verge of economic collapse, its desperate pleas for financial assistance from China and Saudi Arabia last month having been rebuffed, forcing Pakistan to accept loans from the International Monetary Fund — but those loans come with stern conditions limiting government spending, the implementation of which will risk inflaming further unrest. A suspected U.S. predator drone attack in the tribal areas on Saturday — one of dozens in recent months — has further alienated a population already suspicious of U.S. interference. Hardly surprising, then, that Pakistani leaders have reacted with alarm to politicians and the media in India pointing a finger at Pakistan-based terror groups over the Mumbai attack. Some foreign investigators have made similar claims, although not in any official capacity.

Most Pakistanis reacted with horror to news of the Mumbai killing spree starting Wednesday, having lived through equally devastating attacks on their own soil. But that initial sympathy quickly gave way to hostility as the focus of blame landed on Pakistan — a knee-jerk first reaction, rather than one based on any solid evidence. "It is a tragic incident, and we also felt bad about it as Pakistan is going through the same problem," says Abdur Rashid, a 67-year-old retired government servant in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. "But it was really unfortunate to see that even before the operation [to clear out the attackers] was finished, the Indian government stated that Pakistan is involved. It sounds that the entire incident was concocted to punish Pakistan."

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Pakistan sets army on alert: Focus Information Agency

Islamabad.

Pakistan set its army on alert due to the worsening of the crisis with India over the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, ITAR-TASS reports.According to a source who preferred to stay anonymous, a representative of country’s military units informed that due measures have been taken in response to the increasing Indian military forces on the border to Pakistan.

“In case of emergency, Pakistan’s army will send extra military contingent at the border to India”, the source said, adding that the official decision will be taken over the next 24 hours. According to him, Pakistan’s army is “ready to resist to any kind of aggression”. For that purpose, an army of 100,000 soldiers would be placed on the borderline to India.

Content take from the following source: Pakistan sets army on alert: Focus Information Agency

Pakistan May Build Up Troops on Indian Border: WSJ

By ZAHID HUSSAIN

ISLAMABAD -- A Pakistani official warned Saturday that troops would be diverted from its war against al Qaeda and Taliban militants and deployed on the Indian border if Pakistan felt threatened by its neighbor in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

A senior security official accused India of heightening tension between the two nuclear-armed nations by blaming "elements from Pakistan" for the coordinated terrorist attacks against Indian commercial capital which killed 195 people.

"The next 48 hours are critical in determining how things unfold," the top security official told a group of journalists. He said the war on terror wouldn't be Pakistan's priority in the event of India military buildup on eastern borders.

Indian officials see Pakistan's complicity for the worst terrorist attacks on their soil which they said were carried out by Islamic militants with links to Pakistan. Pakistan has demanded that India present hard evidence and has strenuously condemned the attacks. President Asif Ali Zardari also said that nobody backed by Pakistani state was involved.

"If they have evidence they should share it with us," Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday on his return from Delhi. "Our hands are clean."

As the tension mounted Pakistan also backed off a pledge made Friday to send the chief of its Inter Services Intelligence agency in person. Pakistan's top civil and military leaders met on Saturday night to discuss the unfolding situation. It now appears likely an ISI will visit Delhi instead.

Pakistan said it was willing to help India into the investigation into last week's grisly attacks and share intelligence, but won't be brow beaten. Mr. Zardari on Saturday warned India of any "overreaction" and vowed to take action against Islamic militant group found involved in the attack.

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