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ISLAMABAD Friday (AFP) Indian claims that Pakistan is using cross-border terrorism in Kashmir as a policy ploy are "a convenient bogey" used to cover up abuses by Indian soldiers, Pakistan's foreign ministry said.

The accusations, made regularly by Indian ministers, were designed to "cover up the reign of terror let loose by its army in the Indian-occupied Kashmir and to divert attention from the freedom struggle of the Kashmiri people," foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said in a statement.

Pakistan accuses Indian troops of raping thousands of Kashmiri women, arbitrarily detaining thousands of political prisoners, and suppressing Kashmiris who want to decide their own future in a plebiscite supported by United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The latest Indian claims against Pakistan were made by Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha in a BBC interview broadcast Thursday.

He alleged that Islamabad was sending Islamic militants into the Indian-run southern half of Kashmir as "pre-dialogue negotiating tactic."

Sinha said New Delhi would not contemplate talks on Kashmir which Islamabad has demanded for months until militant incursions totally stopped.

"We will be satisfied only when there is a complete stop to cross-border terrorism. Until then, there is no conducive atmosphere for talks," Sinha said.

He was responding to a suggestion by senior US State Department official Richard Haass that India "mull over" the possibility of opening talks despite the rebel infiltrations.

Khan also accused India of "electoral fraud" in recent state elections in its zone of Kashmir, which resulted in a hung parlaiment and a coalition between the Congress party and the Kashmiri People's Democratic Party (PDP).

Sinha's description of Pakistan's own elections on October 10 as seriously flawed had "few parallels" for their "brazenness," Khan said.

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