Pakistan tests third missile as war rhetoric heats up

Pakistan tested another missile yesterday as India accused the Pakistani President of stoking tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

With a short range of 110 miles, the Abdali missile is still capable of hitting most Indian positions along the border of nearly 2,000 mileswith Pakistan. It was the third ballistic missile Pakistan has tested since Saturday, and was fired as the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, arrived in the region in the hope of defusing tension.

The Pakistani government has said the timing is not connected to the crisis with India but most analysts saw the tests as a calculated riposte to the Indian war rhetoric, which grew raucous last week when Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, exhorted front-line troops to prepare for "a decisive battle".

In Delhi, Jaswant Singh, India's Foreign Minister, described General Pervez Musharraf's defiant televised address on Monday night, in which he denied any infiltration from Pakistan into Kashmir, as disappointing and dangerous. "Disappointing as it merely repeats some earlier reassurances that remain unfulfilled today; dangerous because of deliberate posturing. Tensions have been added, not reduced," he said.

In a speech in January, General Musharraf promised to tame extremists and terrorists based in Pakistan, and subsequently arrested thousands of activists and banned several militant organisations. India, however, has rejected the measures as merely cosmetic.

"India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were born of the same womb," Mr Singh said. "We know what happens in these countries, whether it is cosmetic or not."

A massacre that occurred in Kashmir on 14 May, in which militants who had allegedly infiltrated from Pakistan stormed an Indian army camp, killing more than 30 people, most of them soldiers' wives and children, was taken by India as proof that General Musharraf had done nothing serious to stem the problem.

Mr Singh referred to General Musharraf's assertion that infiltration was not happening as "mere verbal denials ... run against the facts on the ground". He repeated the formula that he offered last autumn: "Pakistan is the epicentre of international terrorism," he said. "The current war against terrorism will not be won until the terrorist base camps are closed decisively."

He added: "Let Musharraf fulfil the assurances he has given all these months ... India cannot continue to be penalised for its patience."

Mr Singh blamed Pakistan for raising the spectre of a nuclear war. "We are not talking of nuclear conflict," he said. "I do acknowledge with some disappointment that President Musharraf and some of his ministers ... have spoken very casually about nuclearisation. This is tantamount to the nuclearisation of terrorism. The threat of nuclear weapons and of terrorism is being held over us simultaneously." He confirmed that "no first use of nuclear weapons remains this country's policy".

The British Foreign Secretary had talks in Islamabad with General Musharraf before arriving in Delhi last night. He told Pakistan's leader of the urgent need to end cross-border terrorism. He said that with a million men confronting each other over the border, and with both sides in possession of nuclear weapons, the risks were "obvious and considerable".

Denying Pakistan's line that it offers only moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmir's freedom fighters, Mr Straw told a news conference in Islamabad: "There isn't any doubt that Pakistan has in the past assisted what they would describe as freedom fighters and the rest of the world describes as terrorists ... across the Line of Control."

Meanwhile, mortar and artillery fire by India and Pakistan continued along the border.