The harassment of India’s d’, Sudhir Vyas, in Islamabad made New Delhi expel four officials of the Pakistan High Commission, declaring them personae non grata. Since such measures often provoke equally strong reaction, Pakistan was also expected to move against some staffers in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

Unfortunately, all this happened when each and every U. S. official visiting India sought to impress upon the Indian Government that Pakistan wanted an end to hostilities and, therefore, bilateral talks should be held soon. Seeing through the game, the purpose of which was to boost the moral position of General Pervez Musharraf, India continued to assert that there could be no talks unless Pakistan reined in cross-border terrorists.

The Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, cried in anguish: "What does Pakistan want? Our envoy has been ill-treated; his car was stopped without any justification and other obstacles created in his way. What kind of independence war is Pakistan fighting in Kashmir where innocent people are being killed and women and children massacred by terrorists." Urging Pakistan not to tax India’s patience, Vajpayee said that Indian forces were ready to meet any eventuality and defend the country. "We have positioned our forces on the border to ensure that Pakistan does not repeat the mistake of Kargil," warned the Prime Minister.

Vajpayee’s outburst was not without justification. Twenty-five civilians were injured when militants hurled a grenade in Kulgam, in the south of Kashmir on January 19. Militants lobbed the grenade at a police bus, but it missed the target and exploded on the road, injuring innocent civilians. The injured were rushed to a local hospital and later shifted to Srinagar. The condition of some of them, including women, was serious. The blast caused panic in the area. The irony of the situation was that only two days earlier the British High Commissioner in India, Rob Young, had visited Kulgam and given the impression that Britain was for ending violence in the Kashmir Valley. But after the attack on innocent civilians he did not utter even a word of condemnation against the perpetrators of violence in the State.

Militants gunned down an assistant sub-inspector of the Jammu and Kashmir police, Mushtaq Ahmed, near Bandipore town in north Kashmir along with his young son, Mudasir. The killers barged into his house and began shooting inmates indiscriminately. Mushtaq was working with the Special Operations Group which the Mufti Sayeed Government, now ruling Jammu and Kashmir, had promised to disband under the "healing touch" programme. Efforts of Pakistan’s ISI are now directed in disrupting whatever peaceful measures the Mufti government is proposing by firing shots through guns supplied to their agents masquerading as "liberators of Kashmir" in the violence-ridden State.

The Indian Mission staff in Islamabad was at a loss to understand the provocation for the action against the country’s Charge d' affaires. Usually, such things happen in retaliation to treatment meted out to diplomatic staff of the other country. But nothing whatsoever was done by Indian intelligence agencies to cause inconvenience to the Pakistan High Commission staff. What could be the motive behind the treatment meted out to Vyas? It is stated that Vyas’s car was stopped on two occasions, right in front of his residence, and was forcibly prevented from leaving when he and his wife were going to attend official diplomatic engagements at the Malaysian and Nepalese embassies.

When the Mission car, flying the Indian national flag, was able to leave the residence, it was forcibly stopped and boxed in by four vehicles and two motorcycles repeatedly on the main roads of the town. Vyas and his wife were thus prevented from performing their diplomatic functions, arriving more than an hour late for each engagement. On the return journey, too, attempts were made to block the entrance gate of his residence by parking a vehicle in front of it. All this was in gross violation of diplomatic norms.

In keeping with the current ‘get tough with Pakistan’ mood in the Prime Minister’s Office, New Delhi decided to mount pressure on Islamabad in order to make Pakistan behave. India formulated a two-pronged strategy: one, consolidate counter-terrorism efforts and, two, launch a sustained diplomatic campaign against Islamabad. The Indian foreign office created a post of Additional Secretary (Counter-terrorism) and senior diplomat, Meera Shankar, was appointed to supervise New Delhi’s campaign against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.

During interactions between India’s foreign service officers and the emissaries of the White Houses, as in the past, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism will be on the agenda when the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal, visits the U. S. A. in February. India is also launching sustained efforts to keep informed leaders like President Mohammed Khatami of Iran, who are free from bias against any country, India or Pakistan, in order to forestall any moves likely to be made by Pakistan to raise the Kashmir issue again in world fora.