United Nations: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on September 13 hit back at Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf accusing him of indulging in "nuclear blackmail" and using terror as an instrument of state policy against India, and told the global coalition not to condone Pakistan-directed killings in Jammu and Kashmir.

In a hard-hitting address to the United Nations General Assembly, the Indian leader minced no words in attacking Musharraf's "self-serving" comments on Kashmir and Gujarat and posed a blunt question to the international coalition headed by the US - how can it condone Pakistan-directed killings to promote a "bizarre version of self- determination"?

Vajpayee's remarks come a day after Musharraf's vitriolic attack on India in his address to the Assembly in which he raked up the Gujarat violence and ridiculed the elections in Kashmir.

Recalling that the international community had taken some collective decisions in the global effort to combat terrorism and to choke off its lifelines, Vajpayee asked the world bodies' Counter Terrorism Committee to enforce compliance of Security Council resolution 1373 "by states known to be sponsoring, sheltering, funding, arming and training terrorists".

Replying to Musharraf's charge that South Asia is hostage to one accident, one act of terrorism and one strategic miscalculation by India, the Prime Minister said, "In our South Asian region, nuclear blackmail has emerged over the last few months as a new arrow in the quiver of state-sponsored terrorism."

"Dark threats were held out that actions by India to stamp out cross-border terrorism could provoke a nuclear war. To succumb to such blatant nuclear terrorism would mean forgetting the bitter lessons of the September 11 tragedy."

"No one in our country wants a war, conventional or otherwise. Nor are we seeking any territory," he said. "But, absolutely everyone in India wanted an end to cross- border terrorism which has claimed thousands of innocent lives and denied entire generations their right to a peaceful existence with normal economic and social activity."

"We are determined to end it with all the means at our command. Let there be no doubt about it in any quarter," he asserted.

PTI