Indo-Pak roguish duel: Pull back from the brink now!

Three developments underscore this danger: the exchange of venomous rhetoric between Mr Vajpayee and General Musharraf at the United Nations; moves towards actual deployment of nuclear weapons in both countries; and intensified skirmishes, including grisly happenings, along the Kashmir border.

Take this last. According to the Hindustan Times, Pakistani troops crossed the border last month and ambushed a Jat Regiment patrol, killing four. They chopped off the head of a soldier and carried it as a trophy.

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In ghastly, ferocious retaliation, the Jat Regiment killed nine Pakistanis. "For gruesome impact", it brought back the heads of two Pakistanis.

The episode is utterly repulsive and nauseating. Killing enemy soldiers is legally permitted only when war is declared. Killing casually is illegal.

Mutilating bodies is downright barbaric. Such medieval practices are impermissible in a minimally civilised society -- no matter how grave the provocation. Such things didn't even happen in Bosnia.

Everything is NOT fair in (love or) war. There are well-defined rules about whom you can attack and by what means. Non-combatants cannot be targeted. Use of force cannot be disproportionate. Inhuman or cruel methods are banned. Even prisoners-of-war must be treated humanely.

Violations of these rules, embodied in international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, can invite severe penalties -- as happened with Nazi war-criminals.

India and Pakistan have both disgraced themselves by committing such ghoulish acts. This shakes one's faith in their leaders' maturity and ability to control their foot-soldiers. The least they can now do is court-martial the culprits -- and show barbarism is utterly unacceptable.

Less ghastly but politically more damaging was the mud-slinging between Mr Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf in New York. Gen Musharraf launched a broadside against India for its "brutal suppression of the Kashmiris' demand for self-determination and freedom…"

Reacting, Mr Vajpayee assailed him for using "cross-border terrorism" as "a tool of blackmail". He also accused him of having made "a public admission that Pakistan is sponsoring terrorism …"

Both leaders questioned each other's credentials to hold responsible international positions. Pakistan placed India among "states which occupy and suppress other peoples". India dismissed this as "rubbish" and the result of Pakistan's "annual itch" on Kashmir.

Gen Musharraf miscalculated the international mood by harping on Kashmir's "liberation struggle" without condemning indiscriminate militant violence aided by Islamabad. Pakistan is today under America's critical scrutiny. The New York Times says: "Pakistan's behaviour has fallen well short of what Americans are entitled to expect…" If it doesn't behave, Washington must "reduce its dependence" on it.

Mr Vajpayee conducted himself with no maturity or dignity either. He too used bellicose rhetoric to match the General. It's irrelevant that Gen Musharraf fired the first shot. What matters is that India lowered its global image.

India-Pakistan's venomous exchange in New York has seriously damaged their fragile half-truce -- and growing people-to-people contacts. Since the Lahore-Delhi bus service was resumed, there have been any number of visits of citizens, businessmen, schoolchildren, journalists and parliamentarians. The most dramatic of these was little Noor's trip with its explosion of goodwill.

This contrasts sharply with the extremely guarded, even mean-spirited, official-level exchanges. The two governments have shown they are out of sync with their peoples who favour peace and reconciliation. They, especially Pakistan, are clamping down on citizens' visits by holding up visas. Visits of a jurists' delegation and a businessmen's group have just been cancelled.

While Mr Vajpayee must be complimented for his "hand-of-friendship" speech, he never discussed his larger plans with his party or prepared the government for peace. Nor has he taken the initiative forward imaginatively. The bureaucrats negotiating normalisation quibble over the sequence of steps to be taken.

They restored ambassador-level contacts. But there's been no agreement on resuming air and rail links or on trade. India made rail-links restoration conditional upon resumption of flights and free passage through airspace. Pakistan insists that air links can't be resumed unless India says it won't unilaterally suspend overflights, as it did last year. India refused. The talks collapsed.

New Delhi has gradually hardened its insistence that it won't talk to Pakistan until "cross-border terrorism" ends. Islamabad questions India's willingness to discuss Kashmir. Resentment and suspicion prevail in both governments.

It's as if both states had become slaves to a compelling degenerative logic, which prevents reasonable behaviour and helps self-fulfilling doomsday prophesies come true.

India and Pakistan may be perilously close to the brink of another military confrontation. Both are furiously stockpiling fissile material and preparing to deploy missiles. On September 1, India's Nuclear Control Authority at its first-ever meeting took "a number of decisions" to develop the "strategic (nuclear) forces programme" to "consolidate India's nuclear deterrence".

Just two days later, Pakistan's National Control Authority decided to make "qualitative upgrades" in its nuclear programme.

The Indian Defence Ministry will soon "operationalise" the intermediate-range Agni missile and raise two new missile groups. Pakistan is considered more advanced than India in missile deployment, and is planning a Ghazhanvi missile test-flight.

Both have a variety of missiles capable of striking each other's cities with nuclear warhead in less than 10 minutes. There are no crisis-prevention measures between them. They have repeatedly practised nuclear blackmail.

Amidst all this, India is reportedly building two special bunkers to protect the Union Cabinet from a nuclear strike. One bunker is being built right within South Block, in the heart of Delhi.

This doesn't highlight security for the Cabinet, but lack of security for Delhi's 15 million ordinary citizens. They could become victims of a holocaust within minutes of a decision made across the border -- a decision they cannot influence or control.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.