JAMMU, Oct 29 — Pakistani troops have begun preparations for thwarting India’s plan to raise a barbed wire fence on the 187-km-long international border, (IB) from Akhnoor to Kathua in the Jammu sector.

Reports reaching here from across the border said during his recent visit to the Sialkot sector across Jammu, Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf, held a discussion with senior functionaries of the army and the Rangers on India’s plan to fence the border.

According to these reports General Musharraf is said to have asked the army and Rangers to take in hand all possible measures for ensuring that the BSF was not able to start the fencing project. He has asked his troops to stop fencing at any cost. “Come what may the fencing project has to be thwarted,” he said.

Though the Government of India has yet to release funds to the BSF in Jammu, which have been assigned the task of raising the eight-feet high fence, and the construction material has yet to be dropped near the IB, Pakistan has, according to the reports, started getting ready for launching an offensive, even if it results in a prolonged Indo-Pakistan border conflict.

The reports said Islamabad had raised objections to the fencing of the border on the plea that it treated the border belt between Kathua and Akhnoor as a “working border.” But the real factor that has prompted Pakistan to attempt at blocking the project was that Islamabad did not want to see the border fully sealed.

Since the agencies across the LoC had concentrated on the IB for pushing into the state large groups of militants and arms smugglers, these did not want to see infiltration routes getting blocked by fencing.

Second, Islamabad had a feeling that if India was allowed to raise the fence, it would be construed as Pakistan’s acceptance of the IB as “permanent border” between the two sides.

Work on the project was suspended in 1995 after the Pakistani troops pounded the border belts. Since then India has tried to adopt a go-slow strategy in order to avoid an armed conflict between the two sides.

The Union Minister cleared the project again after reports from field intelligence agencies had favoured fencing the IB which would arrest the rate of infiltration and facilitate shifting more than three battalions of the BSF from the IB for internal security. The union Home Ministry and the Ministry of Defence decided that the fencing would be undertaken by the BSF under the overall security cover of Indian troops.

Under the revised plan, 50 km of the 187-km-long border had to be fenced by the end of September 2000. However, the work could not be started because of non-availability of funds. In addition, the Government of India wanted time for making elaborate security preparations for countering any Pakistani attack once the work on the fencing project was resumed.

A report said that Pakistan had deployed additional troops across Samba, R.S. Pora, Kathua and Akhnoor for any eventuality. Various types of barriers, including clay and tin walls, had been raised by the Pakistani Rangers to use these as a shield against any Indian retaliation.

The report said under the instructions of General Pervez, highly sophisticated weapons, including long-range guns, had been moved close to the border villages across Akhnoor, Samba, Kathua and R.S. Pora.