The Indian military went on alert yesterday following reports of the coup in neighbouring Pakistan. The Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, held a late-night crisis meeting with senior political and defence officials, including National Security Council advisers to deal with the "unexpected" situation.
"The reports coming from Pakistan are a cause of grave concern," a prime ministerial aide said in New Delhi. He said Indian officials were monitoring the situation carefully. "The Prime Minister is keeping in constant touch with the Indian High Commission in Islamabad in which everyone was safe," a spokesman said.
Official sources said the Cabinet Committee on Security would meet after Mr Vajpayee's newly-elected government led by the Hindu nationalists was sworn into office today. All three service chiefs would be consulted.
Tension between Delhi and Islamabad, which have fought three wars since independence 52 years ago, intensified after an Indian Air Force fighter shot down a Pakistani maritime reconnaissance aircraft in August, barely four weeks after the two stopped fighting in northern Kashmir. More than 1,200 combatants died in the 11-week border war in Kashmir's remote Kargil region, including around 700 Pakistani soldiers. Analysts believe the war was launched by the Pakistani army under Gen Parvez Musharraf's direct supervision.
Gen Musharraf had commanded an army division in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the mid-1980s and meticulously planned the infiltration of Kargil which he was ordered to vacate under pressure from the Pakistani Prime Minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif.
Escalation of the border conflict was prevented at the intervention of President Clinton.
Foreign diplomats in Delhi said "backdoor negotiations " between Indian and Pakistani emissaries had been working on a plan to settle the 50-year Kashmir dispute, responsible for two of the three wars between the neighbours, but the army opposed any settlement with Delhi. "This would have considerably reduced the Pakistani army's importance by robbing it of its principal enemy," a diplomat said.
Indian officials said yesterday's events in Pakistan would not only have serious repercussions for normalising bilateral relations but they feared the army could "externalise" the situation by militarily engaging with India, especially in Kashmir.
Mr Vajpayee recently said India was willing to hold peace talks with Pakistan despite its "treachery" in Kashmir, but security officials said a military putsch would make negotiations difficult.
India blames the Pakistani military and its counterintelligence agencies for "sponsoring" the decade-long civil war in Kashmir in which over 25,000 people have died. Pakistan denies this assertion.
Pakistan and India became nuclear states last year and are developing missiles and other means to deliver weapons of mass destruction deep into each other's territories.
