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India went overboard, say diplomats

Pakistan emerged with some brownie points Friday when diplomats who visited the crash-site of the plane downed by India concluded that it should not have been brought down, even if it had strayed into Indian territory.

"My gut feeling is that the plane may have strayed into restricted space. However, the Indian reaction was nowhere near in line,'' said one defence official who visited the site in Sindh, a southern province of Pakistan, on Thursday.

"It appears the plane was hit while in the air, and a plane like that does not glide very far. The question is, what was it doing there in the first place?'' asked another diplomat.

Pakistan, seeking to garner international support against India, agrees the aircraft may have strayed, but accuses India of the ''cold-blooded murder'' of the 16 military personnel aboard.

The diplomats said the incident underlined the vital need for India and Pakistan to respect a 1991 agreement banning flights by combat aircraft 10km from the border.

''The agreement says that a reconnaissance plane is a combat plane. The 1991 document is a confidence building measure designed to stop precisely this kind of incident,'' said another diplomat.

Pakistan's toehold on the moral high ground was strengthened when the United States said that neither India nor Pakistan respected the 1991 agreement, and held India responsible for a "more serious violation."

"'Yesterday we talked about a 1991 agreement that we indicated was not respected. I indicated there was a difference between not respecting the notification part and that it was much more serious not respecting the agreement by shooting down an aircraft,'' US State Department Spokesman James Rubin said. ''With respect to the location of the plane when it was shot down, we cannot independently confirm where the Pakistani plane was fired at. The border is highly disputed in that area.''

However, the defence attaches, who had global positioning system equipment with them, confirm that the wreckage landed in Pakistani territory as Islamabad claims.

Brajesh Mishra, India's national security adviser, had on Thursday said the aircraft had intruded 10km into Indian territory. He suggested that it was on a mission to detect India's radar defences.

"Are you saying to me that after it had fingerprinted all the electronic radar defences we should have allowed it to go back?'' Mishra had asked.

The diplomats too agreed that there appeared little justification for the aircraft, an anti submarine patrol plane, to be over land.

One attache said he understood Pakistani officials to say the plane's flight plan was for an over-sea patrol. He could not understand why it ended up over barren tidal marshes over an inlet of the Arabian Sea.

The diplomats said the downing was an excessive reaction. New Delhi could have made a diplomatic protest through normal channels, forced the aircraft to land or fired a warning shot to make it land.

India, however, says that the aircraft maintained radio silence, making it impossible to order the crew to land.

UNI

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