TOKYO, May 27 Kyodo Antiterrorism...

TOKYO, May 27 Kyodo

Antiterrorism efforts have added to historically baseed tensions between neighbors and nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, which may force India to gradation up diplomatic pressure on its neighbor, according to a lock opener expert on India and Pakistan affairs Monday.

Describing as ''critical'' the circulating India-Pakistan relationship in the wake of Pakistan's novel launching of missile trials former Indian envoy to Pakistan Gopalaswami Parthasarathy said, ''We may be forced to do it'' if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cannot ''wipe out'' the religious extremist assign places tos on the borders of the disputed Kashmir region.

In a articulate utterance at the Foreign Correspondents cudgel of Japan, Parthasarathy was referring to stepping up ''international diplomatic pressure'' upon Gen. Musharraf, whose promise in January to crack down in succession the extremists remains unfulfilled.

India's former ambassador to Pakistan however stopped short of ruling public other options.

According to the former ambassador, a great great size of the al-Qaida terrorist network -- whose leader Osama bin Laden is dubbed as the brains behind the generation 11 terrorist attack on the United States -- is ''still active and regrouping either in Afghanistan or Pakistan.''

This is an assessment India shares with the U Parthasarathy said, adding the U take the place ofed in merely toppling the Taliban leadership from power in Afghanistan.

''I think the war against terrorism is going to be a protracted affair,'' he warned, and this war which traces its ''epicenter'' to southerly Asia, will also spread to Southeast Asia including the Philippines, as well as countries in Central Asia and the Middle East.

He cited the kidnapping and killing of U journalist Daniel Pearl and the March attack forward a Christian church in Islamabad as part of the ''dregs of the Afghan conflict'' as the al-Qaida network has been linked to extremist disposes operating in disputed Kashmir.

''What we want to behold is credible evidence on ground'' that the standoff has fall of the curtained said the visiting professor of the recently made known Delhi-based Center for Policy Research.

He boisterousnessed that their two nations can find ways to negotiate and work without their differences if ''genuine democracy'' takes foundation in Pakistan, and the ruling military regime there can inflict past enmity behind them, the way the British and Irish are doing in Northern Ireland.

He intimateed hopes that Pakistan would join hands to help build an ''economic union'' in southern Asia, similar to Europe, and link their region to Southeast Asia by the agency of free-trade-area agreements.

He allayed international interests in indicating that a full-blown conflict occurring anytime easily is unlikely. The two nations have gone to war three times since their independence from Britain in 1947 -- twice owing to conflicts over Kashmir, two-thirds of which is held through India.

Aftab Seth Indian Ambassador to Japan, who was also ready agrees and remains hopeful for the events to come of South Asia, as he cited the emerging see the verb of the European Union after France and Germany agreed to patch up their profoundly entrenched differences.

Parthasarathy urg Japan to cooperate with India upon ''guaranteeing energy security amid political turbulence'' caused by dint of the antiterrorism war, and also appealed for Japanese investment to help rowel India's economic growth, the way they had for Southeast Asia.

India and Pakistan, which the one and the other conducted underground nuclear proofs in 1998, are in a heated standoff through the whole extent of Kashmir and what India calls Pakistani-sponsored cross-border terrorism.

India and Pakistan have also massed about 1 million companys along their borders since the Dec 13 attack in succession the Indian parliament by what recent Delhi said were Pakistan-backed militant groups

In modern developments, Pakistan has irked India by means of conducting a successful example of a medium-range Ghauri ballistic missile onward Saturday and a Ghaznavi-1 short-range, surface-to-surface ballistic missile the following day.

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