India accuses Pakistan of inciting Sikh radicals

NEW DELHI—India’s top national security official has accused Pakistan of trying to stir up Sikh militancy in northern Punjab state, striking a sour note ahead of direct talks this week between the rivals.
The accusation by National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan came in the wake of a bomb blast Sunday in a packed cinema in the state’s industrial city of Ludhiana that killed six people and injured 32 others. “There has been a manifest attempt in Pakistan to build up a radical Sikh environment,” Narayanan was quoted as saying by the Indian Express daily.
“We had intelligence about four to six months back that a lot of effort was going into attempts to foment militancy,” he said. “We have tracked intelligence information, we have studied the way such attacks take place and we can read a pattern.”
Punjab, India’s only Sikh-majority state with a population of about 25 million, was wracked by a separatist revolt in the 1980s which claimed thousands of lives before it was quashed. A home ministry official and the state’s former police chief earlier this week also blamed Sunday’s attack on Sikh separatists, who have links to Islamic rebels allegedly backed by Pakistan.
Former police chief Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, who is credited with wiping out the Sikh militant movement in the 1980s in a merciless crackdown, pointed a finger at a group called the Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF). The group wants an independent state called Khalistan carved out of India and has been linked to Kashmir-based Islamic rebel groups.
India accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent Islamic extremists from using its soil as a springboard to launch attacks, especially in Kashmir where a separatist revolt has claimed more than 44,000 lives since 1989. The nuclear-armed rivals are due to hold two days of talks starting Thursday as part of a slow-moving peace dialogue launched three years ago, India’s foreign ministry confirmed.
Defence and foreign officials will discuss ways to cut down accidental border trespasses as well as intensified cooperation measures on the nuclear security front. India and Pakistan signed an agreement in February to cut the risk of nuclear weapons accidents between the South Asian neighbours. The two sides already exchange lists of nuclear facilities at the start of every year.
On Monday, senior Indian and Pakistani officials also will review joint efforts to combat cross-border militancy. Narayanan said Islamic rebel groups operating on both sides of the border were turning their attention to other Indian states to draw more attention to the Kashmir insurgency.
“They have a feeling that the Kashmir issue is not able to attract the kind of attention they would want it to,” he said. “Our information is that they may try high-profile targets in and around Kashmir and also outside the state.”
Pakistan has denied accusations that it backs Islamic militant groups which New Delhi says are behind recent terror attacks in India.

—Agencies