Al Qaida may be operating in Pakistan - Rumsfeld

Al Qaida fighters may be operating in the Kashmir region dividing India and Pakistan, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld, in talks today with Pakistan’s president, was sure to discuss Islamabad’s role in finding Osama bin Laden’s fighters, both in the remote tribal regions of Pakistan itself and also potentially in Kashmir.

‘‘I have seen indications that there, in fact, are al Qaida in the areas we’re talking about, near the Line of Control’’ that separates the Pakistani and Indian sectors of Kashmir, Rumsfeld told a news conference in New Delhi, India, before flying to Pakistan.

‘‘I do not have evidence of precisely how many, or who, or where’’ they may be, the defence secretary said.

He spoke after meeting with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to discuss the Kashmir crisis and the long-term outlook for US-India military ties.

For some time, Indian officials have claimed that al Qaida members have infiltrated Kashmir, in part because that would draw a dramatic parallel to the US war against al Qaida in Afghanistan.

An Indian official said this week there is evidence of up to two-dozen al-Qaida fighters in the Indian part of Kashmir.

Attacks on India by Muslim militants who want Kashmir to be independent, or part of Pakistan, are a main source of tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

But US officials previously have said they see no hard evidence of any large numbers of al Qaida in the Himalayan region.

Some of the Pakistani militants in Kashmir do have long-standing ties to al Qaida, and some trained in bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan. A few non-Pakistani al Qaida supporters are believed to have sought refuge in Kashmir, US officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But it appears that Pakistanis in the Kashmir region are acting of their own volition when they launch cross-border attacks on India, the US officials said.

India has insisted that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf crack down on the militants’ training camps in Pakistan and keep them from crossing into India. Musharraf assured India last week that he had ordered his forces to stop fighters from crossing.

Efforts to apprehend al-Qaida members, including in the remote and largely autonomous tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, were to be a focus of Rumsfeld’s talks today with Musharraf.