ISLAMABAD, July 24 (1991): Islamabad sought on Wednesday to defuse tension with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir after Pakistan's army chief said war was looming. "Of course the situation on the border is tense but there is no cause for alarm," a foreign ministry spokesman told a news briefing. "There are no threatening or abnormal troop movements on the Indian side. We are keeping close watch." Army Chief General Mirza Aslam Beg said on Monday he feared India might attack Pakistan. The shadows of war...

SRINAGAR, July 16 (1991): Kashmir police said on Tuesday that at least 12 people were feared drowned after a crowd of villagers, trying to cross a river to flee security force raids, crammed onto a boat which sank. They said about 30 people, fleeing raids on Monday on three villages in the Himalayan foothills near Sopore, some 45 km (30 miles) north of Srinagar, had leapt into the small boat. At least 18 managed to get to shore when the overloaded boat sank in midstream, leaving 12 missing and feared...

SRINAGAR, July 13 (1991):Authorities said on Saturday they had managed to revive negotiations with Kashmir militants on the fate of a kidnapped oil executive just as a deadline for killing him expired. It was not clear whether a deadlock could be broken between officials and the Ikhwan-e-Muslimeen (Moslem Brotherhood), which captured K. Doraiswamy, a Bombay-based executive of a state- owned oil company, 16 days ago. The militant group, one of dozens battling India's rule of its only Moslem-majority state, said it...

ISLAMABAD, July 9 (1991): Pakistan said on Tuesday that the presence of young, fit Israelis in disputed Kashmir was incongruous, while newspapers speculated they might have been preparing a strike against a secret Pakistani nuclear plant. Senior foreign ministry official Shaharyar Mohammad Khan said his Indian opposite number Muchkund Dubey had insisted during talks in the Maldives last week that Israelis caught up in a recent kidnap drama were tourists. Six young Israelis staying in Indian Kashmir were abducted last...

SRINAGAR, July 6 (1991): Two Swedish engineers were freed on Saturday after being held hostage by Kashmiri militants in northern India for more than three months, police chief J.N. Saksena said. He said that Jan-Ole Loman and Johan Jansson were set free in the Kashmir valley town of Bijbehara, about 40 km (25 miles) from Srinagar, summer capital of India's only Moslem-majority region. Saksena said the two men were with the police but would give no further details. Other officials, however, said the two men were...

SRINAGAR, July 3 (1991): Militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir freed an Israeli hostage on Wednesday after he was abducted last week and held by two separate groups. Israeli Yair Yitzhaki was handed over to journalists who took him to a United Nations mission in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar. The journalists said they offered to mediate when the U.N. mission said it could not accept a direct handover offered by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which has spearheaded an 18-month-old insurgency...

UNITED NATIONS, July 2 (1991): Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar appealed on Tuesday to captors of an Israeli tourist in Kashmir to release him immediately and unharmed. In a statement read by his spokeswoman, Nadia Younes, the secretary-general said that "no aim can be furthered by the taking of innocent hostages." The hostage, Yair Yitzhaki, was one of six Israeli men abducted last week by a Moslem fundamentalist group fighting Indian rule of Kashmir. One Israeli was killed and four escaped. Yitzhaki fell...

SRINAGAR, July 1 (1991): Kashmiri militants extended by 24 hours on Monday their deadline for killing a kidnapped Indian oil executive and issued a photograph they said showed a seriously wounded Swedish hostage. But there was no fresh word on an Israeli held by one of the dozens of Moslem militant groups fighting Indian rule of Kashmir. The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has insisted it will release Israeli Yair Yitzhaki only to a United Nations representative, a demand that police say can be met. "It...