Just three minutes from nuclear strike, India and Pakistan hold councils of war

India lives in several centuries at once, it has been said. What is true of peace will also be true if India and Pakistan go to war.

Yesterday, as Indian and Pakistani troops once again exchanged heavy artillery fire across Kashmir's ceasefire line, the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, held a war council in the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar, chairing a meeting of the Unified Command to review the preparations for war and the security situation along the border.

In Rawalpindi, Pakistan's corps commanders met to discuss operational strategy, and later announced that Pakistani troops were to be withdrawn from UN peace-keeping duties in Sierra Leone "in the wake of a grave Indian threat".

The world quakes at what will happen if the Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf, or Mr Vajpayee press the nuclear button. Estimates of India's and Pakistan's nuclear strengths vary wildly, but at the low end of the scale Pakistan is estimated to have at least 40 nuclear bombs compared with India's 60 – quite sufficient for the task.