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'Complete understanding' with Sharief: Gen Musharraf

Pakistan's army chief said that guerillas fighting India in north Kashmir would be asked to ''change their position'' after a United.States-Pakistan accord reached on Sunday.

''The Mujahideen (holy warriors) will be requested to change their position. It is to be seen what will be their reply,'' the mass-circulation local Urdu-language daily Jang quoted Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf as saying yesterday.

He was commenting on an agreement between Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief and US President Bill Clinton on Sunday to take what a joint statement called ''concrete steps'' for the restoration of the 1972 Line of Control that divides India and Pakistan.

US officials said that meant Pakistan would ensure the retreat of hundreds of militants who, holed up on mountain vantage points, have faced nearly two months of attacks by Indian armed forces.

A Pakistani spokesman said yesterday that Islamabad would appeal to guerillas to end fighting because they had achieved their purpose of highlighting the Kashmir issue by their operation in the northern Kargil-Drass sector.

Gen Musharraf said there was ''complete understanding'' between the army and the civilian government about Sharief's mission to Washington.

''A final decision on how to bring these Mujahideen back and what procedure to adopt will be taken on the prime minister's return home,'' Jang quoted Gen Musharraf as saying.

Sharief was reported yesterday to have flown to New York to meet Pakistani citizens there. It was not known when he would return to Pakistan to meet opposition calls for an explanation of the weekend accord.

Some of the guerilla groups fighting India's rule over two-thirds of Kashmir it controls have already rejected the Clinton-Sharief agreement as a sell out and said their fighters would not withdraw.

In what was the first official Pakistani estimate of the guerillas in the Kargil area, Gen Musharraf said from 1,500 to 2,000 Mujahideen were fighting in the area.

''These Kashmiri Mujahideen are demonstrating unprecedented fighting expertise,'' he said.

Islamabad denies New Delhi's charge that the guerillas include regular Pakistan Army soldiers. The guerilla groups say their fighters are mostly local Kashmiris but included volunteers from Pakistan and Afghan veterans of the guerilla war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

UNI

The Kargil Crisis

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