Home
Discover Islam
Quran Recitations
Lectures
Fatwa
Articles
Fiqh
E-Books
Women
Boys & Girls 
Ramadan
Fatwa Audios
Month of Mercy
Women
Eed Al- Fitr
Food Recipes
Videos
Pakistan again said on Saturday that it did not want war with India, as the international community tried to defuse tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors after Islamabad moved troops to the border.
The White House called for calm amid a flurry of diplomatic activity in both Islamabad and New Delhi aimed at easing already badly strained ties, one month after the Mumbai attacks, which India has blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
"We have lost our people -- we do not talk about war, we do not talk about vengeance," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in a speech on the first anniversary of the assassination of his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto.
"Dialogue is our biggest arsenal," he told ministers and lawmakers in remarks broadcast live on state television, saying negotiations were "the solution to the problem of the region."
But Zardari did warn India not to push Islamabad too hard for action against organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group New Delhi says masterminded the Mumbai attacks, which left 172 people dead including nine of the 10 gunmen.
"We have non-state actors. Yes, they are forcing an agenda on us," the Pakistani leader said.
But on the subject of future action against such movements, he said: "We shall do it because we need it, not because you want it."
"This mettle has been tested many times. Please do not test it again... Allow us the freedom of democracy, allow us the freedom of choice."
Relations between the South Asian neighbors -- which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir -- have plummeted in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, and hit new depths on Friday.
Pakistani officials said the military had moved troops from the tribal areas near Afghanistan, where they are fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, to the eastern border with India as a "minimum security" measure.
The senior security and defense officials described the troop movements as "limited" but the news set off alarm bells in New Delhi, where Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned his military chiefs for a strategy session.
India also advised its nationals to avoid travel to Pakistan, saying it was unsafe for them to be in the country.
Russia's foreign ministry on Saturday called for "maximum restraint", saying it was " extremely concerned by the news that on both sides of the border there is a build-up of troops and military equipment".
China and Iran have also called for calm, tasking their foreign ministers to consult with both India's Pranab Mukherjee and Pakistan's Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Mukherjee also met with his Saudi counterpart.
Both Islamabad and New Delhi have repeatedly said they do not want war and have called on the other to tone down the rhetoric but warn they would act if provoked.
Before Zardari's speech, Mukherjee again called on Pakistan to do more to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba and urged Pakistani leaders not to "unnecessarily try to create tension".
"Do not try to deflect the issue. A problem has to be tackled face to face. Evading a problem will not help to get rid of it," Mukherjee said in the eastern Indian town of Behrampur.
Islamabad has said it is willing to cooperate with India in investigating the carnage in Mumbai but says New Delhi has offered no solid proof that Pakistani nationals were involved.
India and Pakistan came to the brink of a fourth war after an attack on the Indian parliament in late 2001 -- a strike New Delhi also blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Both sides deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to the common border but they eventually pulled back following intense international mediation.
On Friday, Pakistani officials said a "limited number of troops" -- local media put the figure at 20,000 -- had been moved to the eastern border near India, and leave had been suspended for armed forces on active duty.
"We do not want to create any war hysteria but we have to take minimum security measures to ward off any threat," a defense ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Any major shift of Pakistani troops out of the tribal areas would likely spark concern in Washington and other Western capitals, as it could open the door to more cross-border militant attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan.
PHOTO CAPTION
An Indian soldier near the Line of Control (LOC) which separates the India and Pakistan administered Kashmir.
Reuters
Prayer Times
Prayer times for Doha, Qatar 
