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MULTAN, Pakistan Feb 12 (AFP) - A senior Pakistani diplomat thrown out of India on charges of funding Islamic militants said Wednesday his expulsion was a ploy to divert world attention from atrocities in Kashmir.

"I had foreseen six months ago that India wanted to stage this drama to divert world attention from Kashmir," Jalil Abbas Jeelani, who was Pakistan's Acting High Commissioner in New Delhi until Saturday, told reporters in his home city of Multan in southern Punjab province.

"India wants Pakistan to be declared a terrorist state and it is using the global war against terrorism, against freedom fighters in Indian-occupied Kashmir who are waging a struggle for right of plebiscite according to UN resolutions."

Indian police registered a case against Jeelani under its anti-terrorism laws after accusing him of handing 6250 dollars worth of cash to a Kashmiri woman to give to militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan state claimed by both nuclear neighbours.

New Delhi accuses Islamabad of funding, arming and training militants waging an insurgency since 1989. Islamabad says it only provides diplomatic, moral and political support to what it sees as a freedom struggle.

It accuses Indian troops of torture, rape, arbitrary arrest and the extra-judicial killings of Kashmiris.

Islamabad wants a plebiscite on rule by India or Pakistan conducted among Kashmiris, as mandated by United Nations Security Council resolutions dating back to 1948.

Jeelani said the charges against him were part of a game "which is repugnant to diplomatic norms."

India on Saturday gave Jeelani and four of his colleagues 48 hours to leave the country. Pakistan immediately expelled India's acting high commissioner Sudhir Vyas and four staffers in a tit-for-tat response.

The mutual expulsions were the second this year and cap several weeks of deteriorating diplomatic relations that saw both sides accuse each other of harassing their respective diplomats in January.

The nuclear-armed arch-rivals have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir. A feared fourth war last year was averted by intensive rounds of international mediation. 

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