India tests missile ahead of envoy’s visit

INDIA test fired a new air-to-air missile yesterday, a day before the scheduled arrival of a US diplomat trying to improve relations between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, according to media reports.

The missile test came amid reports of three deaths on the disputed Kashmir border.

Sources at India’s Defence Ministry said another test was scheduled within the next two days, according to the Press Trust of India.

India has said it has a fixed schedule of missile tests for its growing weaponry and routinely denies they are connected to other events, although often India and Pakistan conduct weapons tests a day apart.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they became independent nations in 1947. International diplomacy averted another war last year.

On Thursday, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said he would not accept Pakistan’s offer for mutual destruction of nuclear arsenals.

The nuclear disarmament offer came from Pakistan earlier in the week as part of a series of goodwill gestures starting with plans to exchange ambassadors as a first step toward improving relations.

The missile tested yesterday has a striking range of 15 to 25 miles, it was reported. The missile was fired from Chandipur, in the east coast state of Orissa.

The test came as Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visited Afghanistan, on his way to New Delhi. On Thursday, Armitage visited Pakistan and encouraged recent steps taken by nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to resume peace talks.

They have an agreement to notify each other of major weapons tests, but it was not immediately clear if battle-zone weapons such as an air-to-air missile is included.

India has accused Pakistan of training and financing separatists in Kashmir, its only Muslim majority state where a pro-India political party worker and two Islamic militants were killed in separate incidents of violence yesterday, as Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged fire across the Kashmir border, a police source said. Islamabad has said there are no training camps on its territory and the government only supports the moral cause of the rebels.

An Indian police spokesman said 50-year-old Ghulam Ahmed Rather, a worker of the state’s National Conference party, was shot dead in Khrew township of southern Pulwama district yesterday afternoon.

Rather was coming out of a mosque after offering Friday prayers when suspected rebels intercepted him and fired bullets killing him on the spot.

Police reinforcements reached the scene, but the gunmen escaped.

More than 38,000 people have been killed in Indian Kashmir since the eruption of anti-Indian rebellion in the region in 1989.