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No decision yet on pull out

Muslim militants battling the Indian forces in Kashmir pondered a government appeal to withdraw from Kargil today to help end the worst military stand-off between India and Pakistan in nearly 30 years.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief was reported to have made contact with several of the Mujahideen (holy warrior) groups to make good a pledge to US President Bill Clinton to take 'concrete steps' to end the fighting.

Initial reaction from several of the insurgent groups was a defiant rejection of the appeal for 'help' made by Pakistan's top civil-military body, the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, to resolve the two-month-old crisis.

But there was no official word from the guerrillas' umbrella organisation, the United Jehad Council, which had slammed Sharief's US commitments as a sellout and surrender of their campaign to end Indian rule of the ''disputed region.''

The News said Sharief met several Mujahideen leaders late yesterday to reinforce the DCC appeal ''to help resolve the current Kargil situation,'' a thinly veiled plea to withdraw back across Pakistani lines.

''An official spokesman claimed that the Mujahideen leaders assured the prime minister they would not take any steps that were detrimental to the peace process the government had chosen to follow,'' The News reported.

Calls for a pullout mark a u-turn in the government's attitude towards the militants, whom it calls 'freedom fighters' waging an independent campaign.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said in a statement that Sharief's handling of the crisis was ''damaging to Pakistan's national interest.''

''Nawaz is unclear about his commitment to the Kashmiri people and their struggle for freedom. While we must have peace in this unstable, nuclear-capable region, we cannot allow Nawaz's ambiguous policy to damage the struggle of the people of Kashmir,'' she said in a statement from London.

The government's appeal has sparked scattered protests across Pakistan by Islamic opposition parties and the public burning of effigies of Sharief and Clinton to register displeasure at what militants call backtracking on a cornerstone of Sharief's Kashmir policy.

The appeal was made against the background of a major Indian assault to drive out Pakistan-backed infiltrators off heights in the Batalik-Kargil-Dras sector of Kashmir.

Sharief was expected today to hold his first full cabinet meeting since returning from Washington and to underline what government spokesmen say is a successful campaign to internationalise the 52-year-old Kashmir dispute.

UNI

The Kargil Crisis

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