-Caveat Lector- India, Pakistan close to the edge By Ben Barber THE WASHINGTON TIMES Fighting in Kashmir raged unabated yesterday in spite of President Clinton's intervention on the weekend, and analysts say the peacemaking effort may have served only to destablilize the government in nuclear-armed Pakistan. "The crisis has only just begun," said Stephen Cohen, a former White House official and expert on Pakistan's military who is currently with the Brookings Institution. "Pakistan's army thinks that having nuclear weapons equalizes its relations [with the larger and more powerful India] and therefore they can push and poke the Indians without a full war breaking out. "They are dancing close to the edge." By pledging to Mr. Clinton Sunday at Blair House that he would withdraw 700 Islamic fighters from Indian-held territory, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has ignited fierce criticism at home and raised the perennial question of whether the government controls the army or vice-versa. In Washington, Pakistan Embassy spokesman Malik Zahoor Ahmad obliquely raised the specter of nuclear war yesterday, saying Mr. Sharif's visit had been intended to "eliminate the risk of a fourth war between India and Pakistan." -- Continued from Front Page -- "As nuclear powers, both [India and Pakistan] have a responsibility to resolve all disputes and not slide into a conflict that could have dangerous consequences for both countries," he said in an interview. Mr. Cohen and many other observers of Pakistan say its British-style army remains a power independent of the civilian government. They also note that the more restrained army chief of staff, Gen. Jehangir Karamat, was replaced in October with Gen. Parvez Musharraf, a former special forces officer with a more aggressive attitude. Mr. Ahmad, however, insisted the army was under civilian control. He also denied that Pakistan had control over the militant invaders and rejected Indian claims that they included Pakistani troops. The Indians "have not proved anything," he said, insisting that the fighters who are holed up and resisting fierce Indian air, artillery and infantry attacks were mainly native Kashmiris. He said Mr. Sharif would try to withdraw any Pakistani militants among them. Pakistan's army chief was quoted in a Pakistani newspaper yesterday as saying the government would ask the 1,500 to 2,000 "Kashmiri freedom fighters" to withdraw, but that the final decision would be theirs. "It still has to be seen what their answer will be," Gen. Musharraf told the Urdu-language Jang newspaper. Indian army spokesman Col. Bikram Singh said yesterday there were "no indications on the ground" that any of the infiltrators were withdrawing. Instead, a hail of artillery fire from Pakistan thundered over the 16,000-foot peaks along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. An oil tanker truck was hit and exploded while plying the steep zig-zagging road through the evacuated town of Kargil, on its way to supply isolated towns and army posts as remote as Ladakh, Indian officials said. The attack halted a 4-mile-long column of supply trucks. India needs to bring fuel, food and other supplies to the remote region during the few summer months when the road is free of snow. If India was stymied in its efforts to oust the Muslim fighters from their caves and bunkers atop the ridges overlooking Kargil, Pakistan was feeling instability from the region's fighting. The major Islamic fundamentalist party, Jamaat-I-Islami, called for street protests yesterday to oppose Mr. Sharif's pledge to Mr. Clinton to end the fighting and to reject any withdrawal from Kashmir. The party, which has no seats in parliament, failed to muster large crowds, but analysts said Pakistan's civilian government may face a bigger threat from its own army. Mr. Cohen said he believed the Pakistan army sparked the fighting because it wanted to force India to discuss Kashmir at meetings such as a February summit in Lahore. A prominent South Asian diplomat agreed, saying, "This fighting will show that unless we discuss Kashmir, nothing can be achieved." The fighting in Kashmir began in early May when India launched a massive military operation to evict armed militias who had crossed the disputed border and set up heavily armed mountain bunkers on the Indian side. According to official Indian figures, 283 Indian soldiers have been killed since the fighting began, compared with 542 on the other side. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan traded charges of abducting their respective embassy employees in New Delhi and Islamabad. The Pakistan High Commission claimed two of its staffers, Rao Akhtar Hussain and Mohammed Boota, were seized late Monday from a shopping complex by Indian intelligence agents. India said one of its employees at its embassy in Islamabad was abducted by Pakistani intelligence agents near his house in front of his wife. U.S. efforts to defuse the situation have been "too little, too late," said Mr. Cohen. "It's crisis diplomacy. We should have been involved earlier. Instead we were too involved in treaties and the [Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty] while President Clinton was distracted with other events." 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