lndia continues security fence
India will keep building a security fence to prevent attacks by militants from Pakistani-administered Kashmir, the country's top army officer says.
General N C Vij said the Indian army had intercepted thousands of messages sent from militant bases on the Pakistani side.
He said the activity indicated that the bases were still operating.
Meanwhile gun battles in Indian-administered Kashmir have left several militants and Indian soldiers dead.
The issue of Kashmir is expected to figure in talks in Islamabad later this month between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf.
India has already built a section of the security fence, which will eventually stretch hundreds of kilometres.
Pakistan has repeatedly criticised its construction.
The International Court of Justice in the Hague is "discussing" the legality of this fence when, exactly? Oh, I forgot. Not on their agenda.
Different issues, you say? I don't think so.
India's Border Fence Extended to Kashmir
Country Aims to Stop Pakistani Infiltration
GAKHRIYAL AKHNUR, India -- Ratan Singh, an Indian rice farmer, used to have trouble sleeping. His village lies dangerously close to Pakistan, and in the past two years he has seen more than a half-dozen villagers and hundreds of cattle die in cross-border shooting.
But since India built a thick mud wall and an 8-foot-high, 3-tier maze of barbed-wire fence near the border in Kashmir, the guns have fallen silent.
"We are safe now, and I sleep peacefully," said Singh, 80. But he has a new problem. With the border fence that Indian soldiers erected near the turbulent, zigzag boundary last year, most of his farmland now falls on the other side, exposed to the Pakistani patrol posts. "I am too scared to go to my farm now," said Singh, as he pointed toward his land.
[ . . . ]
Two months ago, officials began to string barbed wire across stretches of the disputed, mountainous cease-fire line, called the Line of Control, which encloses much of Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan considers Jammu and Kashmir disputed territory and objects to the fence.
"The border in Jammu and Kashmir remains un-demarcated. It is a working boundary and a cease-fire line," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's military spokesman. "Any measure to alter the status of these and any attempt to erect [a] new impediment is a direct violation of international commitments, and Pakistan opposes it. Border fencing is not allowed."
I'm hardly the first one to notice this hypocrisy.
