Taj Mahal to be camouflaged against attack

During a break in his fruitless summit meeting with India's Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, less than six months ago, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf took advantage of India's most famous photo backdrop, posing with his wife, Sehba, at the Taj Mahal. But India was preparing to put its famous monument to love under wraps yesterday, to protect it from possible Pakistani missile attack.

"The Taj shines as far as 25 miles away, and is especially visible on moonlit nights," explained MS Juyal, a tourism official in the north Indian city of Agra, where the Taj is located. "It could be a target. We are using khaki camouflage cloth."

India and Pakistan are the world's two great masters of brinkmanship: they have had more than 50 years of nearly non-stop practice. But even cynical observers were sitting up and paying notice last week as the two nuclear-armed neighbours carried out what analysts say is their biggest military build-up in 15 years, with missile batteries, army divisions and air force squadrons ordered into battle formation on both sides of the border.

After a suicide attack on its parliament on 13 December which India says was intended to eliminate its leadership, relations have gone into the deep freeze. Delhi has been doing all in its power to force Pakistan to crack down on the groups it believes responsible.

Mr Vajpayee told a meeting of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which he heads: "No self-respecting country can put up with an attack on its parliament without responding."

The assault was the 47th fidayeen, or suicide attack, by Islamist terrorists on Indian soil in the past two and a half years, though only the second outside Kashmir, the Muslim-majority state in the Himalayas which is the focus of dispute between the two countries.

The attack left 14 people dead, including all five terrorists. India blamed two Pakistan-based militant groups, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Pakistan demanded to see evidence of guilt, and offered to take part in an investigation, an offer India brusquely rejected. Since then, India has recalled its high commissioner from Islamabad, cut travel links and ordered its military into battle readiness. Pakistan has matched India's military build-up step by step; shelling across the border has become routine. Eighteen Indian soldiers died yesterday when mines they were laying near the border in Rajasthan exploded.

Pressure on the two states to defuse the crisis has been intense, and the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, again spoke to both leaders. President George Bush said that he would talk to Mr Vajpayee "if need be". In response, General Musharraf was said to have ordered the arrest of 50 leading militants belonging to the two groups, though no official announcement has been made, perhaps to avoid giving the impression that Pakistan was caving in to Indian demands.