'Al Qaeda will attack peacekeepers'

Britain and America were warned today that any troops they send to patrol the front line between India and Pakistan in Kashmir risk being attacked by radical Islamic groups with links to al Qaeda.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has confirmed that he has held discussions with his US counterpart Donald Rumsfeld over a plan for a joint force aimed at easing tension between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

Mr Rumsfeld will discuss the proposals in both Islamabad and New Delhi next week - but Mr Hoon admitted that India was not yet "wholly persuaded" by the idea of a US-British monitoring force.

Mr Hoon added: "There has been a general discussion on the need to find a practical way of giving both sides reassurance, particularly India because there have been some infiltrations across the line of control. An international monitoring force could be suitable."

If sent, a small number of British troops would help their American counterparts watch out for Islamic militants infiltrating from Pakistan into Indian-controlled Kashmir.

However, militants today upped the stakes by rejecting calls from Islamabad for a ceasefire.

The United Jihad Council, an umbrella group representing fundamentalist militants - many of them with close links to the Taliban, al Qaeda and pro-Pakistan Kashmiri groups who have been backed by Pakistan for years - said the proposal was "suicide".

The group added that guerrilla commanders in the field were determined to fight on. The warning sets the council on a collision course with Pakistan's government, which has laid claim to Kashmir since partition from India in 1947.

Under heavy pressure from America, Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, this week pledged to stop incursions by militant groups across the "line of control" which separates Indian and Pakistani-held Kashmir as the two countries have slid towards an all-out war.

India has warned Pakistan that it will attack if Pakistani-backed militants carry out further terror attacks like the killing of 31 Indians near Jammu recently or last December's shooting spree at the Indian parliament in Delhi. Pakistan has refused to rule out using its nuclear arsenal in response.

Lashkar-e-Taib, one of the main fundamentalist groups behind waves of attacks on Indian soldiers in Kashmir and the murder of civilians, said that it would not only ignore a ceasefire call but was planning more assaults on Indian troops.

Such a move would endanger any Allied monitoring force sent to the area. There were also fears today that, even though any Kashmiri mission might only involve a few dozen British troops, it could contribute to the "overstretch" already hitting the UK's military capabilities, with a number of similar operations going on all over the world.