Britain yesterday "comprehensively" backed India in its fight against terrorism, and said Pakistan's promise of cracking down on Muslim insurgents should be judged on the basis of the ground situation in northern Jammu and Kashmir state.
"The UK stands four square behind India in its fight against terrorism," the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, told a news conference held jointly with the Indian Foreign Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, in New Delhi, as the two south Asian nuclear rivals exchanged artillery fire in Kashmir.
Mr Straw said terrorists were not freedom fighters and the international community was looking to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to implement his promise of curbing cross-border terrorism.
The British Foreign Secretary arrived in Delhi after talks with Gen Musharraf in Islamabad a day earlier, in which he stressed that London expected Pakistan to crack down on terrorism. "I reiterate that the UK government stands with all civilised governments, particularly India, in fighting terrorism," Mr Straw said.
A million Indian and Pakistan troops are massed on their common border since last December's attack on the Indian parliament; Delhi blames Islamabad, a claim which Gen Musharraf denies.
Indian and Pakistani officials, meanwhile, began their three-day meeting of the Indus Commission in Delhi to review the workings of the Indus Water Treaty, under which both have shared the waters of major rivers since 1960.
According to the treaty, Pakistan has been given rights over the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab rivers on which there are no man-made obstructions in India. Delhi, on the other hand, has exclusive use of the eastern Sutlej, Beas and Ravi rivers.
Since its signing - with the World Bank as guarantor - the treaty, hailed globally as a model agreement in water sharing, has remained unaffected by the India-Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971 and the 11-week military engagement in Kashmir's border region of Kargil.
But the current tension has prompted several Indian officials to suggest that water be used as a "weapon of war" by blocking its flow into Pakistan.
Being the lower riparian state, Pakistan is dependent on the river waters that flow from India. Studies indicate that were India to build storage dams reducing the water flow by even 1 per cent, 1.4 million Pakistanis would be parched and their lifeline of agriculture devastated.
However, "there is no question of abrogating the treaty. The present level of tension will have no bearing on the talks," India's Minister of State for Water Resources, Mr Bijoya Chakraborty, said.
Experts declare that abrogating the treaty would be difficult, if not impossible, for India unless it could prove that its national interests were threatened.
They also point out that stopping or decreasing the flow of the rivers would require the construction of reservoirs and barrages of adequate capacity, which would take a decade to build.
Attempts by India to "dilute" or "modify " the treaty with Pakistan would also vitiate relations with neighbours Nepal and Bangladesh, with which it has water-sharing agreements.
India could also be accused of defying the Geneva Convention, which states that starvation of civilians - and it includes drinking water installations - "as a method of warfare is prohibited".
