Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met military chiefs Friday and Pakistan canceled army leave and moved some troops from its western border despite both sides playing down the threat of war over the Mumbai attacks. With tension rising sharply over last month's attacks, in which 179 people were killed, China also emerged as a potential peace broker after Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi unexpectedly called his counterparts in New Delhi and Islamabad. In Washington, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Friday US officials “continue to urge both sides to cooperate on the Mumbai investigation as well as counterterrorism in general.” “We also do not want either side to take any unnecessary steps that raise tensions in an already tense situation,” he said. An official from Singh's office said the prime minister had discussed tension with Pakistan during a scheduled meeting about military pay with the chiefs of the army, navy and air force. While there had been no significant troop movements in either country, military officials in Islamabad said army personnel had been ordered to report to barracks and some troops had been moved off the Afghan border. “A limited number of troops from snow-bound areas and areas where operations are not being conducted have been pulled out,” said a senior security official who declined to be identified. The official declined to say where the troops had been moved to, citing the sensitivity of the issue, but Pakistani media have reported some troops had been redeployed to the Indian border. The movement is likely to be seen with dismay by the United States which does not want to see Pakistan distracted from the battle against Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on Pakistan's western border. But a spokesman for Pakistan's umbrella Taleban group said Friday that if a large number of Pakistani troops were shifted to counter a possible Indian threat, militants would conditionally halt all attacks in the tribal belt. “We would not only avoid any hostile acts in the tribal territory but also suspend cross-border attacks against foreign forces in Afghanistan,” Maulvi Omar, the spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taeban Pakistan (TTP), said by telephone. The spokesman did not specify how many troops would have to be withdrawn from the tribal areas for his pledge to take effect. In tandem with the military moves, Pakistani civil defense authorities have launched a public awareness campaign in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani part of Kashmir, a region ruled by both India and Pakistan but claimed by both in full. “We have launched an awareness campaign in Kashmir to prepare people for self-defense and response in an emergency situation, amid the looming threat of possible Indian aggression,” civil defense official Ghulam Rasool Nagra said. India, the United States and Britain have blamed the Mumbai attack on Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, set up to fight Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks and has denied any state role, blaming “non-state actors.” It has offered to cooperate with India in investigations but denies Indian claims that it has been handed firm evidence of links to militants in Pakistan. Increasingly frenzied media reporting on both sides of the border has fueled war speculation. India Friday advised its citizens not to visit Pakistan. The foreign ministry said Pakistani media reports linking a bomb attack in Lahore to the alleged arrests of several Indians in Pakistan made it unsafe for Indians to visit to that country. War speculation also caused an uptick in Indian federal bond yields in late trade on Friday, “as a possible war could result in additional government borrowing,” said Nandan Pradhan, a dealer at Cosmos Cooperative Bank in Mumbai. China's surprise mediation Yang's call to Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday was unexpected. A senior Indian government official said Friday Yang had suggested a meeting between Indian and Pakistani officials to discuss the tension over the Mumbai attacks. The official said Mukherjee told Yang Pakistan must take major steps against militants before such a meeting would be possible. A crackdown on Pakistan-based militants after the 2001 parliament attack was widely regarded as a sham. “We have explained our position to China that Pakistan should do more and destroy terror camps before we talk about the next step,” the official told Reuters in New Delhi. Yang telephoned Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Friday and called for peace and stability in South Asia. Yang said the escalation of tension was not in the interest of either India or Pakistan, according to the Pakistani foreign ministry.
