India-Pakistan faceoff is a bid to derail talks, say MPs

India, on Tuesday, reacted first in outrage and then with balanced criticism, following the killing of five soldiers on the the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, with members of Parliament (MPs) asking searching questions about those involved in the attack.

Initially, there was a furore in the two Houses of Parliament. In the Lok Sabha, an agitated Yashwant Sinha of the Bharatiya Janata Party, along with the Samajwadi Party's Mulayam Singh Yadav, attacked the government for its 'cowardice' in not responding in kind to the perpetrators. The Rajya Sabha, meanwhile, resounded with angry slogans of 'Pakistan murdabad'.

After the tumult, MPs asked some logical questions to Defence Minister A K Antony, who then made a statement in the two Houses.

Antony said one non-commissioned officer and five others on the Indian side of the LoC in the Poonch sector of the Jammu region were ambushed early on Wednesday morning. "In the ensuing gunfire, five Indian soldiers were martyred and one was injured. The ambush was carried out by approximately 20 heavily-armed terrorists, along with persons dressed in Pakistan Army uniforms," the statement said.

It added: "The number of infiltration attempts have doubled this year in relation to the corresponding period - January 1 to August 5 of 2012. There have also been 57 ceasefire violations this year, which is 80 per cent more than the violations last year, during the same corresponding period. The Indian Army successfully eliminated 19 hardcore terrorists in the recent months of July and August along the LoC and in the hinterland of J&K. The vigilant counter-infiltration grid has ensured that 17 infiltration bids were foiled this year."

"We strongly condemn this incident. The government of India has lodged a strong protest with the government of Pakistan through diplomatic channels," Antony said.

MPs from the opposition were quick to cross-question these claims. Why was the government describing the men as terrorists? How did India know they were "men dressed in Pakistan Army uniforms and were not from the Pakistan Army itself?" MPs wanted to know.

Privately, MPs also asked, quoting reports on Doordarshan, how as many as 20 foreign soldiers had come 400 metres into the Indian side of the LoC and how they had even managed to work out the escape route. MPs speculated this could not have been the work of terrorists and there was clearly a professional hand at work.

Some MPs, both from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, said this was a spillover of Pakistani politics into India. The Pakistan Army had first asked its Afghanistan proxies to strike at the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, warning the civilian Nawaz Sharif government, as well as the Indian government, not to hold talks and had now tried to derail talks by creating tension along the border.

The interpretation of MPs was that the Pakistani Army was trying to dictate the India-Pakistan political agenda - coming up in the form of the Manmohan Singh-Nawaz Sharif meeting in New York next month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly - through military interventions.

External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has not reacted to the event.

Blatant act of deceit, says Sonia
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday said India would not be cowed by the "deceitful" killing of five of its soldiers by Pakistan along the Line of Control and asked the government to take "appropriate" measures, reports PTI.

Expressing deep grief and shock over the incident, she said that the entire Congress party, as indeed the entire country, stood by the families of the martyred soldiers.

Gandhi said the Indian nation could "not be cowed" by such "blatant acts of deceit" and urged the government to take appropriate steps.