Musharraf keeps tension high

Pakistan's military ruler dashed hopes of a reduction in tension between India and Pakistan last night with a speech denying responsibility for the acts that have led India's Prime Minister to call for "a decisive battle".

President Pervez Musharraf told his nation in a televised address: "We do not want war, but if war is thrust upon us we would respond with full might and give a befitting reply."

He added: "We are faced with a grave situation and we are standing at the crossroads of history. The danger of war is not yet over."

His tough words came as the British Government was mired in confusion over whether it intends to halt the sale of arms to India and Pakistan, just as the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, arrives in the sub-continent to try to defuse the crisis.

Although many Labour MPs are calling for an official embargo, Downing Street moved to dismiss suggestions by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) at the weekend that export licences for Hawk jets and other arms would be blocked until the tension in the Indian sub- continent eased.

India and Pakistan have amassed about one million troops along the 2,000-mile border since a suicide attack on India's parliament in December that India blamed on Pakistan.

Last night General Musharraf denied any Pakistani involvement in that incident or in the massacre at an Indian army camp in Kashmir on 14 May that has brought the feuding neighbours to the brink of war.

"Whoever was involved," he said of the latter attack, "wanted to destabilise Pakistan ... I think such acts are committed by organisations that want to destabilise us."

In a blunt denial of concerns voiced by Presidents Putin and Bush as well as by India, he said: "I want to assure all the world: no infiltration is happening across the Line of Control," as the de facto border between Indian and Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir is called.

But then he went out of his way to declare support for the cause on behalf of which the alleged infiltrators fight. "I want to make one thing clear," he said. "A liberation struggle is going on in Kashmir, and Pakistan cannot be held responsible for any acts against Indian oppression.

"Kashmir resides in the heart of every Pakistani. Pakistan would always give its full moral, political and diplomatic support for the Kashmir struggle."