Indian troops have begun withdrawing from the Pakistan border amid acid exchanges between Delhi and Islamabad, but Defence Minister George Fernandes said yesterday that the process to send nearly 500,000 men back to their peacetime locations could take up to two months. Fernandes told Press Trust of India: "The re-deployment of our forces deployed along the international border with Pakistan after the December 13th attack on parliament has begun and the entire exercise will be completed in a two-month timeframe." Along the Line of Control in Kashmir the deployment of Indian troops would remain unchanged. "During the winter season, the influx of militants from across the border comes down to a very low level." Fernandes said. He added: "We will be where we were before this challenge was thrown at us." Most of the troops would be redeployed from the international border along the Jammu, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat sectors.

PTI said Fernandes challenged his critics who accused him of incurring a huge financial burden by rushing troops to the border, saying: "We have achieved the objectives of the deployment." India's re-deployment, seen widely as the result of sustained international pressure, has been accompanied by verbal sniping with Pakistan and lingering uncertainty about the next steps towards peace between the two countries. "Countries ruled by dictators or a military man may, under international pressure, say sometimes they do not believe in terrorism and are combating it. However, actually they feel that if ISI is used to achieve political objectives, it is not wrong," Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani told paramilitary troopers of the Indo-Tibetan border police. "The world should ostracize such nations which support terrorism, so that they realize that not only one country but the whole world is against terror."

In a further twist to the existing standoff, The Hindu newspaper reported yesterday that India had made attendance in the scheduled Saarc summit in Islamabad next year conditional on solid progress being made on regional economic cooperation agreements. Earlier a news channel had claimed terrorism was the real hurdle. "There has to be something concrete to show as far as progress on Sapta and Safta are concerned," the newspaper quoted an Indian source as saying, adding that crucial meetings at the official level are to take place next week in Kathmandu. The Indian Commerce Secretary, Dipak Chatterjee, would travel to Nepal for a meeting of the Saarc Committee on Economic Cooperation, The Hindu said. Indian officials acknowledged that a formal letter was received last month from Pakistan through the Saarc Secretariat in Kathmandu proposing January 11-13 as dates for the summit.

After India makes an assessment of the progress at the Kathmandu meetings, a decision would be taken whether or not the Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will travel to Islamabad for the Saarc summit. "The sources maintained that India was likely to decide next month whether or not the dates were suitable for the Prime Minister to visit Pakistan," The Hindu said. The uncertainty has drawn a sharp rebuke from Pakistan, which accuses New Delhi of creating confusion about the holding of the summit.

The Hindu quoted its sources as expressing fears about the possibility of high-intensity "terrorist strikes" in the run-up to the Saarc summit or even during the course of the meeting. "Such a concern, clearly, is a real one given the fact that Pakistan-based terrorist groups have been targeting innocent civilians both within and outside Jammu and Kashmir."

Asked whether some countries had consented to the dates proposed by Pakistan, the sources replied in the affirmative. They also pointed out that no Government been formed in Pakistan as yet and New Delhi was still watching the situation. There is little doubt that given the "high-voltage" media coverage being given to Pakistan, India and the Saarc summit, "this controversy will not die down till New Delhi decides one way or the other," the newspaper said.

The fears of Christians came true today. The police are allegedly hesitating to arrest the Muslim militants terrorists who attacked and killed 7 Christian employees in the office of the Christian NGO Justice and Peace in the busy commercial area of Karachi in broad daylight on September 25th. Christian leaders have demanded the resignation of Pakistan's Interior Minister due to the firing and teargas shelling of burial rituals for seven martyred Christians and demanded action against the policemen present in the vicinity of Rimpa Plaza where the office of Justice and Peace is situated on the seventh floor with dozens of other offices of Muslim businessmen.

The authorities threatened the families of the martyrs to keep silent and the only survivor of this incident, Robin Piranditta, who was also seriously injured by the terrorists, was taken into protective custody. But Pakistani police yesterday charged the survivor of the September 25th terrorist attack with murder, though the attack that was carried out by two armed men.

According to the police, Robin Piranditta has been their biggest hurdle in the investigation. They claim that he deliberately gave them wrong information about the assailants and the events leading up to the execution-style killing of his office colleagues. The police claim that their suspicion was first aroused when Piranditta gave them two different accounts of what happened on the day of the attack and both his versions "were filled with inconsistencies and collapsed when held up against the prism of logic."

The relatives of Robin Piranditta dispute the charge of murder and claim that he is being framed - a view shared by most human rights activists in the country. Piranditta, who worked as an errand boy at the Idara office, has been in police custody for the past four weeks. He is currently being held at the Saddar Investigation Center.