As Pakistan withdrew more troops from the Afghan border yesterday, possibly to move them to the Kashmir frontier for a faceoff with India, the US stepped up efforts to avert a wider war.
A war between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan would be "somewhere between terrible and catastrophic" and would destroy hard-earned improvements in US relations with both nations, US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said.
Wolfowitz said US efforts to prevent war include both promises of incentives and warnings of punishments.
"I don't think we believe in exhortation alone," Wolfowitz said yesterday in Singapore, where he was meeting with other defense officials at a conference on terrorism and security. "It will be along with carrots and sticks."
US President George W. Bush is sending Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the region next week. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage also is scheduled to visit Islamabad and New Delhi next week.
Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf said he was considering moving more troops to the Hima-layan province of Kashmir.
"Our security comes first. We will use all our resources to protect our security," Musharraf told reporters on Thursday.
The redeployment of what would likely be only a few thousand men would have virtually no impact on the balance of power in Kashmir, but could deeply affect the US-led war against terrorism.
The Pakistani troops on the Afghan border were deployed to help US-led forces track down al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who had taken refuge in the wild and mountainous tribal region on both sides of the frontier, and they have been involved in the arrests of several prominent al-Qaeda leaders.
Rumsfeld said the US had not seen any sign of a Pakistani withdrawal from the border with Afghanistan and said he hoped none would be forthcoming. "The number of Pakistani battalions that have been located along that Afghan border has not changed,"he said. "And we hope it will not change."
But Rashid Quereshi, Mushar-raf's spokesman, confirmed troops had pulled back and said yesterday that their deployment to the Indian border depended entirely "on how the threat continues to increase from India."
Witnesses in the northwestern frontier area said Thursday they had seen scores of army trucks moving soldiers.
Quereshi said earlier that the pullback from the Afghan border, where about 1,000 additional troops were deployed less than a month ago, would not affect Pakistan's relations with the US-led coalition. It was believed Pakistan had a total of about 6,000 troops along the Afghan border, but the government never details troop strength.
Meanwhile, Indian military officials scuttled reports that India had secretly given Pakistan a deadline to halt cross-border infiltration by Pakistan-based Islamic militants into Indian-controlled Kashmir, or face an assault by its troops.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS