India rejects UN probe of soldiers' killings at LoC

India today rejected "any suggestion" that the UN investigate the killing of two soldiers at the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir--an attack which it blames on Pakistan.

India on Thursday rejected "any suggestion" that the UN investigate the killing of two soldiers at the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir--an attack which it blames on Pakistan.

Finance minister P Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi that India would not like to "internationalise" the matter. He rejected Pakistan's allegation that India had carried out a cross-border raid at the LoC on Sunday.

Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar, while speaking to an Indian news channel on Wednesday, had rejected India's allegations and offered a "third party" investigation.

India summoned Pakistan's envoy in New Delhi on Wednesday to lodge a "strong protest", accusing a group of Pakistani soldiers it said had crossed the LoC of "barbaric and inhuman" behavior.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their independence in 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, and both are now nuclear-armed powers.

Away from the border, ties had appeared to be improving of late. Pakistan's cricket team completed a two-week tour of India on Sunday, its first visit in five years.

Firing and small skirmishes are common along the 740-km LoC despite a ceasefire that was agreed in 2003.