India bans Pakistan airline from overflights

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- India banned Pakistan's national airline from entering Indian airspace and ordered half of Pakistan's embassy staff out of the country on Thursday, accusing its neighbor of sponsoring terrorists.

India will also cut its own embassy staff by half in Islamabad, said Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, announcing a swath of new diplomatic sanctions decided Thursday amid heightening tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.

With both sides fortifying their troops along the border, Pakistan said Thursday it wanted to defuse the crisis and was pursuing diplomatic efforts. Still, a spokesman for its military government, Gen. Rashid Quereshi, said Pakistan has "the capacity to react and retaliate in all conceivable ways" -- though he added that a nuclear confrontation was "unthinkable."

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell made phone calls to leaders on both sides Wednesday, urging them to pull back from confrontation and resolve their differences through dialogue.

China -- a powerhouse neighboring both nations -- also said Thursday it was "deeply worried" by India-Pakistan tensions and called for "dialogue and consultations" to keep stability.

After Singh's announcement, a senior official of Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said India's latest step was regrettable and would further aggravate the situation.

Singh said the ban on Pakistani overflights would take effect next Wednesday, while the cuts in embassy staffs would take place within two days. The remaining Pakistani embassy staff would be restricted to the capital, New Delhi, he said.

The Pakistani embassy, or High Commission, was "involved in espionage as well as direct dealings with terrorist organizations," Singh told journalists, without giving any specifics. India had already withdrawn its ambassador from Islamabad.

Fears have risen over the prospect of a new conflict between the two countries after India accused Pakistan of sponsoring a Dec. 13 gun attack on Parliament in New Delhi, which left 145 dead. Islamabad denies the charge.

Singh repeated India's demands that Pakistan take stiffer action against two Islamic militant groups that New Delhi says conducted the attacks. He said India's concerns "have not been fully grasped in Pakistan."

His announcement came after a session of India's Cabinet Committee on Security to consider a diplomatic response in the crisis.

India's defense minister said earlier that his country's troops would be fully deployed along the 1,110-mile border with Pakistan by the weekend.

"In the next two to three days, the deployment process will be completed and the forces will be ready for any eventuality," Defense Minister George Fernandes told Press Trust of India during a press tour of the troubled Kashmir region.

Although both sides were moving troops and weapons such as tanks and rocket launchers toward the border, the frontier remained relatively calm for a second day Thursday, officials said.

A Pakistani military spokesman said there were no exchanges of fire, but that Pakistan had matched India's troop buildup. Witnesses in Karachi said Thursday that anti-aircraft guns had been deployed at the port and other major installations.

There was no indication that either side had deployed nuclear weapons -- which are believed to be stored unassembled.

Both sides said they wanted a diplomatic solution.

"Pakistan has been exercising maximum restraint and utilizing diplomatic channels," said Aziz Ahmed Khan, a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said. He said President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was willing to talk with India's prime minister, raising the possibility that the two might meet at a summit in Nepal next week. "The ball is in India's court," Khan said. "Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, at any level. It is up to India to respond."

India has confirmed that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will attend the Nepal summit but has said there is no intention to meet with Musharraf.

Defense Minister Fernandes said that "at the moment, India places great emphasis on its diplomatic efforts."

Quereshi said he did not expect the conflict to turn into a nuclear confrontation. "It's something that I think one should not even consider. Pakistan and India are responsible nations," he said.

Still, another Pakistani military spokesman, Brig. Cmdr. Muhammed Yakub Khan, warned on Wednesday, "When the troops are sitting eyeball to eyeball and there is so much hatred for each other ... there will be no such thing as limited war."

Two of the three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947 have been over Kashmir, which both nations claim in its entirety. Islamic militants have waged a 12-year insurgency in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, where human rights groups say more than 60,000 people have died.

India demands that Pakistan take further action against two Islamic militant groups fighting in Kashmir that New Delhi says were behind the Parliament attack.

Powell on Wednesday announced that the United States was freezing the assets of the two groups, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Pakistan has frozen the assets of Jaish-e-Mohammed's parent organization and arrested its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, and several other members.

India called the actions "cosmetic" and demanded that Pakistan shut down training camps, halt recruitment and block militant's infiltration into India's portion of Kashmir.

Interior Ministry sources in Islamabad said no action was taken against Lashkar-e-Tayyaba because it has not violated any law in Pakistan.