India-Pakistan: December 18, 2001

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Yemen and Pakistan are negotiating the fate of nearly 500 Yemenis thought to be in Afghanistan and likely to show up in Pakistan. There is much popular pressure in Yemen to get all these people safely home, but Pakistan wants to prosecute the al Qaeda members among this group first.  Pakistan said it would cooperate with India to investigate the people responsible for the attack on the Indian parliament. Pakistan believes that India hires Pakistanis to set off bombs in Pakistan, so there is not a lot of grief in Pakistan over the attack on the Indian parliament. Meanwhile, along the Afghan border, Pakistan has deployed Army troops, police and tribal militias to catch anyone crossing over illegally from Afghanistan.  The large rewards offered for the capture of senior al Qaeda leaders has been well publicized in Pakistan and is expected to make getting across the border more difficult. The fear is that al Qaeda members are trying to reach safe houses in Pakistan, where local al Quaeda members would provide transportation, escorts and the right clothing to get al Qaeda leaders to the coast, where boats can be hired to continue the journey to, say, Yemen. In Kashmir, rebel violence left two civilians, two rebels and one policeman dead.