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India Plans Response to Attack, War Risk Rises http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011213/wl/india_dc_1.html Thursday December 13 6:09 PM ET By Myra MacDonald NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India was preparing its response on Friday to an unprecedented guerrilla attack on its parliament, having vowed to ``liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors, whoever they are, wherever they are.'' Though no-one claimed responsibility, analysts' were quick to mention Muslim rebels in Kashmir -- and the risks if India were to strike at their suspected bases in territory controlled by Pakistan. Both neighbors have tested nuclear weapons and have fought two of three previous wars over mountainous Kashmir. Five gunmen, including a suicide bomber, drove into New Delhi's grand parliament complex on Thursday and killed seven people before security forces gunned them all down. There were clear parallels with a suicide attack on the local assembly of Jammu and Kashmir state two months ago, in which 38 people died. At that time India, under heavy pressure from Western powers to show restraint, held back from striking at the Pakistan-based Islamic militants whom it blames for a 12-year revolt against Delhi's rule in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. But the widely held view of analysts and diplomats then was that, come the next big attack, India would have to strike back. Now that attack has come, against the seat of power of the world's biggest democracy, an imposing parliament complex built more than 70 years ago under India's British imperial rulers. Witnesses said the attackers, exploiting Indian respect for authority, simply drove into the compound in a 1950s-style, white Ambassador car like thousands used by Indian officials, its red roof light flashing and bearing a security sticker. They were killed by guards before they could make it inside, where most of India's government and lawmakers were gathered. ``I can only imagine how horrifying it would have been if the suicide squad...had succeeded in its objective,'' Home (interior) Minister L.K. Advani told reporters. As it was, six guards and a gardener were killed in the gunbattle and some 16 others injured. KASHMIR FLASHPOINT Even as gunshots continued to echo through the parliament complex, reports started coming in of a series of bomb blasts in Kashmir, near the frontier with Pakistan, adding to the tension. An Indian paramilitary official said the explosions, which he said might have been planted by Pakistani soldiers during an overnight exchange of border firing, caused no casualties. The government took care not to pin blame for the parliament attack immediately on Kashmiri separatists, who have launched a spate of suicide attacks on Indian security forces in Kashmir. And Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, whose government denies Indian accusations of funding and arming guerrillas in Kashmir, was quick to condemn the attack, sending a message of sympathy to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. But Indian ministers, who have long accused Muslim Pakistan of sponsoring what they call ``terrorism'' in Kashmir, nonetheless ratcheted up their traditionally bellicose rhetoric. ``We will liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors whoever they are, wherever they are,'' Advani said. ``This was not just an attack on the building, it was a warning to the entire nation. We accept the challenge,'' said Vajpayee, who had already warned that India was losing patience with Pakistan after the attack on the Kashmir state assembly. ``For the past two decades we have been fighting terrorism, now the battle has reached its final phase,'' he said in a televised address to the nation. OPTIONS NARROWING Analysts said the government's tough verbal stance would make it hard for Vajpayee to do nothing if it turned out that Kashmiri separatists were indeed behind the parliament attack. ``The techniques used by the terrorists would seem to suggest they were trained in Pakistan, we have seen these kind of attacks in Jammu and Kashmir in the past,'' said retired Indian major general Afsir Karim, an expert on guerrilla tactics. ``The options are closing. The more the rhetoric increases the fewer the options become,'' said Brian Cloughley, a defense analyst and South Asia specialist. But striking back could mean crossing the Line of Control which has divided Kashmir since war first broke out within weeks of India and Pakistan becoming independent of London in 1947. It was dubbed one of the most dangerous places in the world after the South Asian neighbors tested nuclear devices in 1998. In turn, Musharraf, a general who dismayed many of his own people by bowing to U.S. demands to turn against the Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan, would be under intense domestic pressure to respond to any Indian intrusion across the Line of Control. ``There is no such thing as a limited strike,'' said Cloughley. If these guys go across, Pakistan will go to war.'' ______________________________ Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Copyright 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Check out Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auctions for all of your unique holiday gifts! 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