U.S. Advises Americans to Leave India

In an ominous reflection of fears over war in South Asia, the United States on Friday urged more than 60,000 Americans to leave India immediately and authorized the departure of nonemergency U.S. personnel as soon as possible.

The voluntary evacuation came as a classified Pentagon report estimated that as many as 12 million people would die and an additional 6 million would be injured in the first weeks of a war involving nuclear weapons on the volatile subcontinent.

A war would be “somewhere between terrible and catastrophic,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz predicted Friday at an Asian defense conference in Singapore.

The State Department warning also urged any Americans considering travel to India to defer their plans.

“Conditions along India’s border with Pakistan and in the [Indian] state of Jammu and Kashmir have deteriorated. Tensions have risen to serious levels and the risk of intensified military hostilities between India and Pakistan cannot be ruled out,” the warning said.

The warning called on Americans to avoid all border areas between India and Pakistan, including the Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab and the disputed Kashmir region, because of military movements, heavy artillery fire and the presence of terrorists.

“Terrorist groups, some of which are linked to Al Qaeda and have previously been implicated in attacks on Americans, are active there as well, and have attacked and killed civilians,” the warning said.

Two of the three previous wars between India and Pakistan have been fought over Kashmir, a mainly Muslim region divided between the two nations by the so-called Line of Control following a 1971 conflict. Rebels in the section controlled by India have been fighting for an independent state or union with Pakistan. India is mostly Hindu, while Pakistan is mainly Muslim.

The U.S. warning was coordinated with Britain, Canada and Australia, which also advised their citizens and nonessential diplomats to leave India.

“The situation is dangerous,” British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said, warning fellow citizens to avoid travel to India and Pakistan. “War is not inevitable, but it is important that we should exercise our duty of care as carefully as we can,” he said Friday after returning from talks in South Asia.

About 20,000 Britons are estimated to be living in India and about 700 in Pakistan.

Canadian officials said they were trying to contact 6,000 of their citizens known to be living in India to warn them that they might become targets of politically motivated violence.

“Canada’s involvement in the campaign against terrorism, specifically its military function, raises Canada’s profile and significantly increases dangers for Canadians,” the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Ottawa said in a statement.

The warnings came amid growing international pressure on India and Pakistan to not allow the relentless daily shelling on both sides of the border and attacks by Muslim extremists on Indian targets to escalate into war. Major powers from three continents and the United Nations appealed to the South Asian rivals to use restraint.

“We’re putting a 100% full-court press on this,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Friday in an interview with the BBC. “We’re going to work with friends around the world, all the leaders of the world, to do everything we can to keep this situation from turning into a conflict.”

A strongly worded statement issued Friday by the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations called on Pakistan to take “concrete actions--in accordance with its commitments” to prevent Muslim extremists operating in territory under its control from infiltrating the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir and attacking Indian targets.

“We call on India and Pakistan to continue to work with the international community to ensure that there will be a diplomatic solution to the current crisis,” said the statement from the Group of 8, which consists of the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada, Germany, Italy, Britain and France.

The State Department said Friday that the United States had indications that Pakistani authorities had given instructions to stop the cross-border infiltration by radical Muslim groups, though it was not clear to whom the instructions were given.

Powell noted that the impact and consequences of those directions are still unclear.

“It’s too early to say that it has stopped. And when and if it does stop, it must also stop permanently,” he said, adding that the U.S. expects Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf “to use all of the authority he has to stop it and to keep it stopped so we can get this crisis behind us.”

India Plays Down Threat of Immediate War

With world intervention growing, India sought Friday to calm fears.

“There isn’t any change on the ground. The situation is stable,” Defense Minister George Fernandes said in Singapore, where he was also attending the Asian defense conference. “The troops have been on both sides in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation for the last six months, so I don’t think one needs worry just now as to what is likely to happen.”

Nevertheless, Pakistan continued to move many of its 6,000 troops deployed along its border with Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials. Whether those soldiers will be dispatched to the border with India will depend “on how the threat continues to increase from India,” said a Pakistani presidential spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi.

Pakistan has not turned over about 20 militants India has demanded as a condition to de- escalate hostilities.

India also charged Friday that a large number of Al Qaeda extremists who had evaded U.S. and Pakistani troops had sneaked out of Afghanistan and into Kashmir recently.

When the United States can verify that the infiltrations have stopped, Washington will pressure India to withdraw some of its troops along the border. There are about 1 million Indian and Pakistani troops along the Line of Control in Kashmir and the rest of the border.

There was a “slight hiatus” in infiltrations across the Line of Control earlier this year, a senior Indian defense official said Friday. Heavy snows in the Himalayan mountains that often limit winter hostilities, and Musharraf’s address to the Pakistani people in January that condemned extremism and called for political moderation were among the contributing factors.

But tension increased again as soon as the snow melted.

Powell said he was “impressed” that India and Pakistan seem to be looking for a political solution.

“Both sides realize that little can be gained from a war,” he said. “If the Indians attack, it’s unlikely that they would be able to take care of the problem--on a permanent basis.”

If the two sides pull back from the brink of war, Powell said, the U.S. would be willing to be “helpful” in getting a dialogue going between the two nations on the future of Kashmir.

“Because we have such solid relations with both countries, our good offices could be useful,” he said.

But as senior U.S. officials have been saying for days, the United States is not willing to mediate in any such dialogue.

The Pakistani and Indian governments are expected to come under pressure when their leaders attend a regional summit in Kazakhstan that begins Monday. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has indicated that he will try to get Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to hold face-to-face talks under Moscow’s auspices.

Bush Envoy to Travel to Region Next Week

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage will hold talks with both South Asian leaders when he travels to India and Pakistan on Thursday and Friday. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is expected to swing through the region beginning June 8 following a visit to Afghanistan.

Powell said Friday that he also might travel to the region if it appears necessary. He is coordinating the global pressure on Musharraf and Vajpayee.

“We use all the assets available to us, and since Secretary Rumsfeld was going to be in the region, it made sense for him to go in,” Powell explained Thursday in an interview on PBS’s “NewsHour.”

In the meantime, the U.S. will begin downsizing its diplomatic presence in India. There are about 600 personnel and dependents at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and three consulates in Calcutta, Chennai and Mumbai, the latter two cities formerly known as Madras and Bombay.

An “authorized” evacuation is not as urgent as an “ordered” withdrawal of American personnel, when U.S. officials and their dependents are mandated to leave. Evacuations were not encouraged at any level during the three previous India-Pakistan wars since 1947 because neither country then had nuclear weapons, which they tested in the 1990s.

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Times staff writer William Orme in Toronto and special correspondent Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.