Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said recently that India would not consider using nuclear weapons unless it was under nuclear attack.

“India will never be the first one to use nuclear weapons,” Fernandes said in an interview published yesterday in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.  The statement came as tensions have increased between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan since terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament on Dec. 13.  Fernandes called the attack “a crime of a greater scope” than the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Fernandes said Pakistan is responsible for the terrorist attack and that it had conducted a “war by proxy against India” for 12 years by training and equipping terrorists.  India killed 1,990 terrorists in 2001, Fernandes said.  He added that India and Pakistan could “take joint action” against terrorism if Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf ended his support for attacks on India (Welt am Sonntag, Jan. 6 in BBC Monitoring, Jan. 7).

Latest Developments

Meanwhile, Pakistan has arrested hundreds of people suspected of having links to militant Islamic groups in response to the attack on India’s Parliament, which killed 14 people (see GSN, Jan. 4).  Indian officials questioned whether those arrested were militant leaders and how long Pakistan would detain them.

Pakistan would consider extraditing non-Kashmiri suspects to India if evidence against them were provided, Pakistani foreign ministry official Aziz Khan said yesterday (Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 7).

Pakistan has refused to extradite more than 20 people, mostly Indians, that India has said were part of terrorist or criminal activities in India, the New York Times reported today.  Musharraf said India should provide Pakistan with evidence against the suspects, and Pakistan would prosecute them.

India yesterday shot down an unmanned Pakistani spy plane that had crossed into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and fallen on Pakistani territory, according to Indian officials.  Pakistan denied that the plane went down.

Are the Countries Talking?

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee continued to refuse to participate in official talks with Pakistan until India was convinced Pakistan had shut down militant groups operating against Kashmir and India.  Vajpayee and Musharraf met for a few minutes during a conference of South Asian countries in Katmandu last weekend but did not discuss anything “significant,” Vajpayee said (see GSN, Jan. 3).

Pakistani officials, however, indicated that discussions occurred behind the scenes, the Times reported.  The countries’ foreign ministers met for almost an hour Saturday, although neither country would say what they discussed.  Pakistani Foreign Affairs Minister Abdus Sattar and Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra were filmed looking at a document at the convention, and Musharraf indicated they were discussing something important, the Times reported.

India, however, has tried to keep pressure on Pakistan to act against militant groups by refusing official talks, according to the Times.

“I don’t think Pakistan is prepared to renounce the use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of policy toward India,” said Nirupama Rao, a spokeswoman for India’s ministry of external affairs (Celia Dugger, New York Times, Jan. 7).

South Asian Anti-Terrorism Agreement

Meanwhile, members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation agreed yesterday at the Katmandu conference to change their laws to conform to the recent U.N. Security Council resolution requiring countries to fight terrorism (see GSN, Dec. 5).  The resolution that the SAARC countries adopted condemns terrorism and calls upon members to increase cooperation, Star News TV reported, according to United Press International.  Both Vajpayee and Musharraf attended the conference (United Press International, Jan. 6).

India and the United States Agree to Share Intelligence

India and the United States have agreed to exchange military intelligence related to terrorism, said a defense ministry official, according to the Associated Press.  The two countries developed an outline of the agreement last month when U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith visited India, the official said.  The countries are expected to sign the agreement when Fernandes visits the United States later this month, according to a Hindustan Times report the official said he could not confirm (Associated Press, Jan. 7).

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