New Delhi\'s intelligence agencies seem to be in no doubt that Nepal is being used as a forward base by Pakistan\'s Inter Services Intelligence to foment trouble in India. So what is a Nepali journalist to do when he finds himself at the \'head table\' of a banquet of a South Asian media summit in Islamabad in 2 July, within proximity of Gen Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive of Pakistan?

Why, ask him about it. And so Kanak Mani Dixit. editor of the South Asian magazine Himal and publisher of Himal Khabarpatrika interrupted Gen Musharraf while the soup course was still on, and held the following, brief, conversation.

Q: General saab... you may or may not know this, but Indian intelligence is accusing Pakistan\'s IS! of using Nepal to spread terror in India. What, is your reaction?
A: No. nothing like that has happened. Some people in our embassy (in Kathmandu) have been wrongly accused, which is most regrettable.

Q: But, General saab... a small country, that too a member of SAARC, would be destablised were something like this to happen. Could it be that one hand of the Pakistan government does not know what the other does?

A:No,this kind of thing should not happen, and has not happened from the side of Pakistan.