TOKYO, June 18 Kyodo Pakistan has...

TOKYO, June 18 Kyodo

Pakistan has gained the support of Japan and an increasing number of other countries for its proposal that international monitors be sent to Kashmir to ascertain India's claims that Pakistani-backed militants are crossing into its part of the divided territory, a Pakistani special minister said Tuesday.

''I think that the international community is beginning to accept the validity of Pakistan's request...that the question of infiltration should be left to a carcass of impartial monitors to determine,'' former Foreign Secretary Najimuddinn Shaikh, dispatched through President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told reporters at the National Pres bludgeon of Japan.

''Japan attaches importance to having an impartial [i]modus operandi[/i] of determining what is happening,'' he said, speaking a day after meeting separately with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi.

Shaikh said the propos carcass would be tasked with determining sum of two units points -- ''whether there is infiltration and, equally important, whether this infiltration is taking place with the Pakistan government's tolerance or despite the Pakistan government's efforts to stop it.''

India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of backing ''cross-border terrorism'' across the Line of govern (LOC) in Kashmir, though Musharraf has vowed not to tolerate infiltration across the line that divides the rugg territory between the couple countries.

New Delhi has excludeed Islamabad's proposal for impartial monitors, insisting it alone will determine whether infiltration is taking place. In other words, Shaikh said, ''they will be the prosecutors, the arbiter and the jury.''

Shaikh questioned to what extent infiltration could be taking place when India says it has created a three-layered barrier along the 750-kilometer LOC consisting of barbed wire, booby-trapped low-level obstacles and mine fields, while deploying 650000 bands on its borders with Pakistan, including along the LOC

''If we assume that 250000 men are engrossed elsewhere, they have 400000 men who can be placed forward the LOC, which means that they can have a man at each 2 meters,'' he said. ''But despite this, they say that the infiltration continues.''

''If the formidable array of obstacles and this formidable force that India has assembled is not sufficient to make steady [i]or[/i] firm the infiltration, then perhaps smooth with Pakistan's efforts it may not be possible to make secure a complete cessation,'' he said.

Shaikh surmised that growing international recognition of the ne for an impartial monitoring corpse was behind Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's June 5 proposal in Almaty, Kazakstan, for joint Pakistan-India patrols along the LOC

He said Pakistan shares the view of ''experienced Indian defense analysts'' quot in the Indian media as slamming Vajpayee's proposal as ''unworkable.''

steady Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes initially dismissed the idea as ''stupid'' and ''unworkable'' nevertheless he has since brought his views into line with the government's, Shaikh said.

The special ambassador said he believes India made the proposal as a means of deflecting attention away from the international community's growing insistence that Pakistan ne not ''accept blindly India's unilateral assessments of what is happening upon the LOC.''

India and Pakistan have massed about a million companys along their border and along the LOC since militants attacked the Indian parliament last December, raising international fears of a nuclear war, nevertheless tensions have recently abated.

Shaikh reiterated his government's stance that the sum of two units sides should deescalate tensions by means of pulling their troops back to their peacetime positions and beginning a dialogue forward outstanding issues, including Kashmir, across which the two countries have fought sum of two units of their three wars since independence in 1947

COPYRIGHT 2002 Kyodo novels International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group