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India will go after terrorists: Advani

India on Friday said it will go after terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, but ruled out "for now" its troops crossing the Line of Control (LoC) into the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir for retaliatory strikes.

"We will not be looking for terrorists to strike and then reacting. We will follow a proactive policy," Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani said at a rare interaction with the foreign media corps here.

Though it was legitimate under international law to carry out "hot pursuit" against terrorist groups striking from across the border, New Delhi did not intend to exercise that right, he said.

"Not now. At this moment we are not thinking of it. At this point of time, we look forward to this phase of the global battle against terrorism succeeding," he said referring to the US-led campaign in Afghanistan against terrorism.

Speculation about "hot pursuit" had gained currency after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee wrote to US President George W. Bush in the wake of the October 1 suicide bombing at the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly in Srinagar that New Delhi's patience with Pakistan was running out. A Pakistan-based extremist group had claimed responsibility for the attack that left 38 people killed and 70 wounded in the attack.

Advani claimed that security forces have scored remarkable success within Jammu and Kashmir in identifying and eliminating terrorists and said that effective steps had been taken to prevent infiltration from across the border.

He also ruled out any ceasefire against the terrorist groups and rejected the suggestion that what the state was witnessing was an expression of dissatisfaction of the people. He said India was determined to deal with the problem democratically and it realised that there were no short cuts.

"A vast country like India, which is multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual, is determined to hold on to democracy and does not take short cut procedures of the military rule or authoritarian rule," he said.

After Pakistan was defeated comprehensively in three wars since partition, it had resorted to a proxy war against India, with terrorism as the principal plank of policy, he charged.

Initially, Islamabad recruited and trained youths from Jammu and Kashmir to give the impression of a "rebellion" within the state, but, when support in the state dried up, it started recruiting mercenaries from all over the world to carry out terrorist activities in the state.

"How can this be called evidence of dissatisfaction of the people? I do not subscribe to the view what is happening in Jammu and Kashmir is the doing of the people of the state," he added.

On another front, Advani said that India is taking no chances with the possibility of terrorists launching a biological or chemical war, though reports of scattered attempts at anthrax contamination have been found to be a "hoax".

Postal mails containing white powder received at the offices of the police chief and a university don in Gwalior town in Madhya Pradesh state had been found, on examination at the local laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), to be chalk.

Advani noted that similar reports had also been received from Delhi, Chennai and Kochi.

In Delhi, letters containing a "mysterious white powder" were received at the offices of UNICEF, a private hospital, the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and by a resident in the Nizamuddin neighbourhood.

Police said the envelopes had been sent to the Central Forensic and Scientific Laboratory for analysis.

"All these are being examined. We are leaving nothing to chance,'"Advani said.

Indo-Asian News Service

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