Story number 2 for 7 Jan 2002

(Pakistan)–Elsewhere, the leaders of India and Pakistan remain locked in a high-risk military standoff. While there is building international pressure for talks to defuse the crisis, skirmishes at the border continue. International Needs Network’s Dave Culross says the situation hasn’t had an impact on their work, but the threat is there. “The immediate border areas would be very dangerous because there is a pattern of sporadic gunfire across the borders, and people are being shot on either side of the borders from day to day. But, away from the border itself, there doesn’t seem to be any particular uprisings or any heavy demonstrations that they have to be concerned about.” Culross says it seems that for the moment, believers have been overlooked. “It doesn’t seem that the Christians are being singled out in any particular way by the parties on either side. They’re too busy fighting between the political entities of India and Pakistan, which, in effect, is a fight between Hindus in India and Muslims in Pakistan.”