Pakistan rejects India's charges on infiltration
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-08-04 15:35

Pakistan rebutted on Thursday Indian allegations that Islamist guerrillas were congregating in training camps close to a ceasefire line dividing the disputed territory of Kashmir, reported Reuters.

Foreign ministry spokesman Muhammad Naeem Khan said India had made the claim in order to justify deploying more troops to fight an insurgency inside Kashmir.

"We reject these baseless allegations," Khan told Reuters.

"The Indian government wants to deploy additional troops in the occupied Kashmir on the pretext of so-called training camps."

India's Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee told parliament in New Delhi on Wednesday that a large number of militant training camps had been activated on the Pakistan side of the ceasefire line and that guerrillas were poised to infiltrate into Indian territory.

Mukherjee's statement also reflected growing concern in New Delhi about violence in Kashmir after the Indian army reported a surge in militant infiltration last month and said it had killed dozens of militants.

Pakistani current affairs magazine "The Herald" in a July edition cover story titled "Back to Camp", described how militant organisations had reopened camps in northwestern Pakistan.

Last Friday, while speaking to foreign media, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf sought to allay Indian concerns over such reports.

"Let me assure you that the situation is on the mend," he said.

Musharraf also sought to dispel impressions that relations between South Asia's nuclear-armed rivals, which went to the brink of a fourth war in 2002, were cooling and said their 19-month-old peace process would continue.

India accuses Pakistan of arming, abetting and sending militants across the ceasefire line to fight Indian rule in Kashmir, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in an insurgency that began in 1989.

Pakistan says it only provides moral, diplomatic and political support to what it calls a Kashmiri freedom movement, and accuses the Indian army of human rights violations.

Rivalry over Kashmir has caused two of the three wars Pakistan and India have fought since they won independence from British rule in 1947.

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