We as spiritual beings or souls come to earth in order to experience the human condition. This includes the good and the bad scenarios of this world. Our world is a duality planet and no amount of love or grace will eliminate evil or nastiness. We will return again and again until we have pierced the illusions of this density. The purpose of human life is to awaken to universal truth. This also means that we must awaken to the lies and deceit mankind is subjected to. To pierce the third density illusion is a must in order to remove ourselves from the wheel of human existences. Love is the Aswer by means of Knowledge and Awareness!

Latest US India-Pak Nuke War Estimates - 17 Million Casualties
6-2-2

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon estimates 17 million nuclear 
casualties in South Asia should India and Pakistan embark on a 
nuclear strike against one another. 
  
The figure, compiled by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, does 
not include long-term deaths from radiation sickness, starvation, or 
even victims of fires that could burn long after the initial blasts. 
  
The agency's assessment assumes "100-percent delivery" of both sides 
nuclear weapons. 
  
In such a scenario, it predicts between nine million and 12 million 
people would die. Another two million to five million would be 
injured. 
  
The figure was released on Friday from a recently updated DIA 
estimate based on a worst-case scenario in which both sides expend 
all their nuclear weapons, and score direct hits. 
  
Pentagon officials stress that the estimates cannot take into account 
all the variables that might be involved in a nuclear exchange, and 
that the actual casualty figures could be greater or smaller. 
  
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hinted on Thursday that he 
might share U.S. intelligence estimates about the devastating effect 
of a nuclear war with leaders in the region when he visits India and 
Pakistan next week. 
  
"Certainly, I'd like to be as helpful as I can to both countries," he 
told a Pentagon briefing. 
  
"We've done a lot of thinking about that here in this building and in 
the United States government, having had nuclear weapons for -- 
what? -- 55, 57, 58 years now. 
  
"So we've given a lot of thought to their use and what the effects 
are -- what the immediate effects are, what the lingering effects 
are, and what the secondary effects can be with respect to other 
problems." 
  
DIA estimates of how many nuclear warheads each side has remains 
classified, but one official said the estimate is in the "dozens" for 
both sides, with most warheads believed to be in the 10-20 kiloton 
range. 
  
Other estimates vary, Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems lists Pakistan 
as probably having between 25 and 50 nuclear warheads available, 
while it estimates India with between 100 and 150 nuclear warheads.

*****

India And Pakistan Show No Sign Of Compromise
By Bill Tarrant and Myra MacDonald
6-5-2

ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India and Pakistan showed no sign of 
compromise in a stand-off over Kashmir that has brought the nuclear-
armed foes to the brink of war, as the United States prepared fresh 
diplomatic efforts to ease tension. 
  
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said he would consider 
joint patrols of the Kashmir border if Pakistan ends the incursion of 
guerrillas that has stoked a 12-year rebellion in India's only Muslim-
majority state. 
  
But Pakistan's foreign ministry immediately dismissed the proposal as 
old hat, adding the suggestion was "unlikely to work." 
  
India also said it saw no sign that cross border infiltration by 
Kashmiri separatists had ended -- despite claims from the main 
separatist group that no incursions were taking place -- and both 
sides traded artillery and mortar fire and used armored vehicles 
against each other for the first time in this conflict. 
  
Vajpayee, in Kazakhstan for a regional security meeting, declined to 
meet Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf while there, saying he 
would only do so once India sees a conclusive end to the 
infiltrations. 
  
His defense minister, George Fernandes, said there were no signs of 
that so far. 
  
"Whatever information has so far been coming, it does not indicate 
there has been any substantial or noticeable reduction in 
infiltration," Fernandes told reporters in Bangalore. 
  
Vajpayee said Islamabad must also dismantle militant camps on the 
Pakistani side of the line. 
  
"Our stand is clear," he told a news conference following the 
security summit. "We want to resolve all issues through bilateral 
talks including Kashmir, (but) cross-border terrorism must stop 
before any talks can begin." 
  
Pakistan maintains there is no infiltration across the Line of 
Control that divides Kashmir and has called for independent 
observers, such U.N. monitors, to be allowed to verify this. 
  
"We refuse to accept the Indian claim of being the accusers as well 
as the judges. If they are the accusers, let there be somebody else 
to act as the judge," Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told CNN in 
an interview. 
  
FIRST ATOMIC WAR 
  
The fledgling nuclear powers have massed a million troops along their 
borders, backed by tanks, missiles and artillery. Fears that millions 
could be killed in the world's first atomic war have prompted world 
leaders to step up diplomatic pressure to pull them back from the 
brink 
  
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Defense Secretary 
Donald Rumsfeld will visit India and Pakistan in the coming days in a 
last-ditch effort to prevent the skirmishing in Kashmir from 
escalating into the fourth war between the old foes. 
  
Indian and Pakistani troops shelled each other along the tense 
western and northern frontiers -- and also fired from armored 
vehicles in the first such exchange in the current stand-off, an 
Indian defense official said. 
  
The daily exchanges have been fierce along the western border on the 
plains of Punjab around Silkot, an Indian invasion route and scene of 
vicious tank battles in previous wars. Reports from Pakistan's 
Sialkot city said the fighting has forced hundreds of people to flee 
to the relief centers in the city, some because their homes were set 
afire by the bombing in the dry 104 degrees Fahrenheit heat. 
  
Towns and villages in Punjab have been staging air raid drills this 
week and city workers in Multan are digging trenches for people to 
shelter in. 
  
Pakistan says more than 80 people have been killed, several hundred 
wounded and hundreds of other displaced in the latest eruption of 
shelling along the frontier after a mid-May attack on an Indian army 
camp that killed 34 people, including women and children. 
  
DIPLOMATIC INITIATIVES 
  
Embassies in both countries have sent some of their staff and 
dependants back home and foreign companies in the two countries have 
restricted travel and are making evacuation plans. 
  
Anxieties grew after the United States and Britain urged tens of 
thousands of their nationals in the two countries to leave. 
  
Russian President Vladimir Putin met the Indian and Pakistani leaders 
separately in Almaty. He said afterwards they had sent "very positive 
signals" but differed on preconditions for talks. 
  
Musharraf said he had accepted an invitation to visit Moscow and 
added he had expected Putin to invite Vajpayee too, but the Russian 
president did not mention an invitation to the Indian prime minister. 
  
Western countries are also trying to prevent tensions from escalating 
in Kashmir, already the cause of two of the three wars between the 
countries since independence from Britain in 1947. 
  
Although both countries have downplayed the possibility that the next 
war could turn nuclear, India has an estimated 100 to 150 nuclear 
warheads and Pakistan 25 to 50. 
  
The next round of international diplomacy comes with the visit by 
Armitage to Pakistan and India on June 6 and 7. 
  
Rumsfeld will follow him there next week as Washington tries to cool 
tensions that could derail its war on terror in the wake of September 
11 attacks on New York and Washington. 
  
Before leaving Washington, Rumsfeld stressed he did not intend to be 
a mediator. 
  
"I'm not going out there as some sort of a mediator, if that's the 
implication of your question," Rumsfeld told reporters at the 
Pentagon. 
  
Rumsfeld noted that Armitage would visit India and Pakistan first and 
he would probably discuss the issue with Armitage before he made the 
stops. 
  
"It partly will depend on how things play out between now and then 
and what comes out of the Armitage meetings," Rumsfeld said.  

*****

India, Pakistan Exchange Heavy Fire, Five Wounded
6-6-2

JAMMU, India/SIALKOT, Pakistan (Reuters) - Indian and Pakistani 
troops again exchanged machinegun and artillery fire across their 
frontier in the disputed Kashmir region on Thursday as U.S. pressure 
mounted on the nuclear-armed rivals to avert war. 
  
Pakistani military officials and witnesses said five civilians were 
injured from heavy Indian firing into villages near Sialkot city, in 
Pakistan's Punjab province. 
  
Indian forces started firing into Pakistani Punjab, said a Pakistani 
military official in Sialkot. "We also returned the fire," he said. 
  
India reported exchanges further north across the cease-fire line in 
southwest Kashmir. 
  
There were the "normal" heavy overnight exchanges of artillery, 
mortar and machinegun fire in about a dozen places across the cease-
fire line, an Indian army official said. 
  
The clashes came as President Bush appealed to the leaders of 
Pakistan and India to step back from the brink of war, part of a high-
powered U.S. diplomatic drive to defuse tensions. 
  
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage arrived in Islamabad 
on Thursday. He will fly to New Delhi on Friday, ahead of a visit to 
the region by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 
  
India and Pakistan have stepped up the skirmishes across their tense 
border since a May 14 attack on an Indian army camp in Indian-ruled 
Kashmir. 
  
India blames Pakistan-based militants for the attack and also for the 
December raid on the Indian parliament that triggered the 
mobilization of almost a million troops by the two sides along their 
long border. 
  
The conflict took a new turn on Wednesday when the two armies used 
armored vehicles for the first time to target each other.  

*****

India Plans To Launch War Within Two Weeks
By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi 
The Independent - London
6-6-2
  
India's military is seeking final authorisation to invade the 
Pakistani side of divided Kashmir in the middle of this month to 
destroy the camps of Islamic militants. 
  
The planned campaign would be similar to the American attack in 
Afghanistan, in which air strikes would be followed by ground 
assaults by special forces transported by helicopter, military 
sources said yesterday. 
  
Smart bombs and other advanced ordnance are reported to have been 
loaded on to French-made Mirage 2000H and Russian-built MiG-27 
aircraft at bases in northern and western India. 
  
As Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, strengthened his warning to 
Britons to leave the region, military planners in Delhi expressed 
confidence that a war would not boil over into a nuclear exchange. 
  
A senior Indian official accused Britain, America and other western 
countries of "adding their weight to Pakistan's nuclear blackmail" by 
telling their citizens to leave. 
  
"This is jumping the gun," he said. "Our intention is not to have an 
all-out war. It would be a limited action." 
  
Most senior Indian officers expect that the conflict would last about 
a week before pressure from America and other powers forced a 
ceasefire. 
  
One officer said he believed there was only the "slimmest chance" of 
nuclear weapons being used. "We will call Pakistan's nuclear bluff," 
he said. It [the nuclear factor] cannot deter us any more." 
  
The Indians want to move before the arrival of heavy monsoon rains at 
the beginning of July make military operations impossible. 
  
The tension was underlined by the Foreign Office's second warning to 
Britons to leave the region. 
  
Last week Mr Straw said they should "consider" leaving. Yesterday he 
said they "should" do so amid evidence that the first advice had been 
widely ignored. Officials say there are some 20,000 Britons in India, 
but unofficial estimates are much higher. 
  
As America issued equally robust advice to its 60,000 citizens, a 
senior Indian planning officer said that Washington and London knew 
that action was imminent. 
  
"The US-led move out of Delhi indicates that Washington has been 
informed of India's intentions of hitting Pakistan and is taking them 
seriously," he said. 
  
Japan's foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, cancelled a trip to the 
region hours after speaking to Mr Straw. Tokyo refused to give a 
reason, saying only that "there were various considerations". 
  
India's plan of attack is to seize and hold tracts of Pakistani 
Kashmir, providing the government with a much-needed military triumph 
and the military with improved defensive positions against Islamic 
militants. 
  
Officers indicated that the air force was poised to execute a 
strategy developed over several years to strike at 50 to 75 militant 
bases and a handful of other targets in Kashmir. 
  
The Indians would then send troops across the high mountain passes in 
helicopters. Planners expect major casualties as the helicopters 
cross four lines of Pakistani air defences equipped with advanced 
radar. 
  
Targets will include a bridge across the Karakoram highway connecting 
China to the region and at least three others linking Pakistani 
Kashmir to the rest of the country. 
  
Their destruction would prevent China from replenishing its ally 
Pakistan's weaponry. It would also cut off supply routes from 
Pakistan to front-line units. 
  
India's broad strategy is to execute air strikes that will induce 
Pakistan into extending the conflict by opening a wider front. 
  
President Bush telephoned both leaders to urge calm and the crisis 
dominated talks in London between Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld, the 
American defence secretary, who is on his way to India and Pakistan. 
  
The two countries have massed more than a million men on their border 
since the crisis began with an attack by militants on the Indian 
parliament in December. 
  
Relations worsened after another attack last month in which 22 wives 
and children of Indian army personnel were killed. In the latest 
diplomatic rebuff, Pakistan rejected an Indian offer to establish a 
joint border monitoring force to help halt incursions by Islamic 
militants into Indian-controlled Kashmir. 
  
India's military believes that it now has political backing for war. 
An officer said the beleaguered ruling coalition was "fully aware" 
that backing down at this juncture would mean political suicide. 
  
The Indian armed forces have been losing men for 13 years in fighting 
in Kashmir. By attacking soon, an officer said, they planned to set 
back Pakistan's military capability by at least 30 years, pushing it 
into the military "dark ages". India has assured Washington that its 
forces would give the American bases at Jacobabad, Pasni and 
Dalbandin close to the Afghan border a wide berth. 
  
An army officer said: "Casualties in men and machines in such an 
operation will be high and the military has firmly told the 
politicians to prepare the nation for losses and delayed results, as 
fighting will be fierce." 
  
Pakistan has concentrated the majority of its forces in Kashmir and 
would unleash its Scud-like Chinese M 9 and M 11 ballistic missiles.  

*****

India & Pak - This Time There Is No Hope Of A Clean Conflict
By Kuldip Nayar 
The Times - London
6-7-2

India and Pakistan have fought two wars: in 1965 and 1971. 
  
They were 'clean' wars, unlike those experienced in Europe. There 
were no attacks on cities, no civilians were killed. Envoys of the 
two countries did not leave their posts and the Governments involved 
never told foreign citizens to leave. 
  
People on both sides knew that there was a battle between the 
soldiers some distance away on the front. The public learnt about it 
on the radio or read about it in the newspapers. Now, however, the 
two countries are quivering on the brink of disaster. Their forces, 
one million soldiers, have been standing eyeball to eyeball across 
the Line of Control for the past six months. 
  
Shelling across the border is increasing and tension is mounting. War 
may have broken out suddenly in the past. But they knew it would end 
in a few days. 
  
Now people are worried. They go to sleep with fear and wake tormented 
by it the next morning. Even after living with the danger for months, 
they have not become used to it. They pray to avoid the disaster. 
  
Nuclear weapons, which both countries acquired in the early Nineties, 
have made the difference. Abdul Qadir Khan, the father of the 
Pakistan bomb, once said: ìWe will use the bomb if you ever drive us 
to the wall.î 
  
The sense now, however, is of desperation as the two countries appear 
to have reached a dead end on Kashmir. In the Sixties and Seventies 
there was hope for some settlement. Since then they have faced wars 
and internal commotions. They have even held talks at various levels 
but without any result. 
  
The two countries have been holding their part of Kashmir, separated 
by the Line of Control since 1948 when the UN ordered a ceasefire. 
Islamabad wants at least the Muslim-majority valley to integrate with 
it. 
  
But Delhi maintains that when the state ruler, a Hindu, signed the 
instrument of accession after the lapse of British colonial rule in 
August 1947, Jammu and Kashmir became part of India. The then popular 
Muslim leader, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, endorsed that agreement. 
  
What is also different now is that Pakistan's President Musharraf 
appears to have been using Islamic fundamentalists to infiltrate 
Kashmir and indulge in murder. The predecessors of General Musharraf 
also fomented the 'proxy war', but they saw to it that the 'the 
movement against the subjugation by India' remained in the hands of 
Kashmiris. Many of them crossed into Pakistan after the rigged 1987 
state election. The question was: ballot or bullet? They chose 
bullet. General Musharraf's military junta has stoked the fires of 
terrorism by inducting foreigners from Sudan, Algeria and even Libya. 
  
Cross-border terrorism of the past decade has changed since the 
1960s. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Foreign Minister in the Government of 
General Ayub Khan, first tried sending Pakistani soldiers to 
infiltrate Kashmir in 1964. He convinced General Ayub that there 
would be an uprising in Kashmir, which was sick and tired of Delhi's 
authoritarian rule. But that uprising did not take place until 1989. 
  
In those days, the United Nations Security Council would endlessly 
discuss how to stop India and Pakistan going to war. Now the crisis 
has gone on for months, but the Security Council has hardly met to 
discuss the problem. The problem with Kashmir is that it is almost 
wholly intractable. Even if there is a dialogue, what can India give 
without affecting its secular policy? Could the Line of Control, with 
an autonomous Kashmir state within India, be acceptable to Pakistan? 
  
After the Lahore talks between Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Prime 
Minister, and Pakistan's ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it 
looked as if a formula along these lines had begun to take shape. But 
then General Musharraf ousted Mr Sharif. How can the military junta, 
which has a vested interest in Kashmir, accept the same formula? 
Should India wait for democracy to return to Pakistan? It is a tricky 
situation. In 1961 India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, 
told Mr Bhutto in London: "I know that we must find a solution to the 
Kashmir problem. But we have got caught in a situation which we 
cannot get out of without causing damage to the systems and 
structures of our respective societies."
  
* The author is a member of India's Upper House of Parliament; 
formerly High Commissioner in London in 1990, and a correspondent for 
The Times from 1960 to 1985.