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India admits peace efforts might fail; prepares for war

India will do its utmost to avert war with Pakistan, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said yesterday, but he asked Indians to be prepared for the possibility that peace efforts might fail.

Meanwhile, 18 Indian soldiers were killed while laying mines to deter Pakistani tanks, officials said, as the border standoff continued.

India has said it won't talk peace until Pakistan stops what New Delhi calls a "proxy war" -- the backing of Islamic guerrillas fighting Indian security forces in Kashmir. Vajpayee stressed that "no means shall be spared" in putting a stop to what he called "Pakistan-sponsored terrorism."

"I have said before and I would like to say it again: we do not want war, but a war in the form of cross-border terrorism has already been thrust on India," Vajpayee told senior officials of his Bharatiya Janata Party, according to Press Trust of India. "We shall do our utmost to avoid war with Pakistan."

Relations between the two South Asian nuclear rivals have worsened since a suicide attack on India's Parliament Dec. 13 that New Delhi blames on Pakistan's spy agency and two Islamic militant groups operating from Pakistani territory. Islamabad denies the charge.

India calls Pakistan the "epicenter" of terrorism in the region. Islamic guerrillas, from a dozen-odd militant groups in Pakistan, have sneaked across the Kashmir frontier for 12 years to launch attacks on Indian army targets and public places in Jammu & Kashmir. Thousands of civilians have been killed.

Thousands of poor villagers were fleeing their homes or were asked to evacuate in border areas, where shells and bullets have punched holes in homes and killed several civilians and their cattle. More than 20,000 villagers have fled their homes in the Jammu region alone, civil administration officials said.

In the desert state of Raja-sthan, 18 soldiers were killed and 12 others wounded Friday when land mines they were laying along the border exploded, army officials in the state said yesterday. Two soldiers and a civilian died in similar blasts on Tuesday in the Bhuttowalla area, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

In the northern city of Agra, authorities began preparations to camouflage the Taj Mahal if Pakistani warplanes launch an attack. Local tailors were stitching more than 400m of khaki, black and green cloth, to be strung across the Taj Mahal, the 17th-century marble mausoleum, officials said.

Officials said they would try to hide its four minarets and dome, if a full-scale conflict between the two countries were to break out. A key Indian air force base is located in Agra.

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