Powell in Islamabad to Press Renewed India-Pakistan Dialogue

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, January 17, 2002

Powell in Islamabad to Press Renewed India-Pakistan Dialogue

US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday on the first leg of a South Asian peace-making shuttle aimed at coaxing India and Pakistan to step back from a fourth war.

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US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday on the first leg of a South Asian peace-making shuttle aimed at coaxing India and Pakistan to step back from a fourth war.

Islamabad is Powell's first stop on a five-nation trip that also includes India, Afghanistan, Nepal and Japan, the venue for an Afghanistan reconstruction conference next week.

Powell's aim in India and Pakistan is to build on a relative reduction in tension since Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in a speech on Saturday, met more of India's demands for a crackdown on militant Islamists attacking Indian forces in disputed Kashmir.

More than 1,500 hardline militants, most of them from five groups Musharraf outlawed on Saturday, have been rounded up and hundreds of group offices have been shut.

India deployed its army along the Pakistani border after a December 13 attack on its parliament in New Delhi.

India blamed the attack on Pakistan-based militants fighting its rule in its portion of Kashmir. Pakistan condemned the raid in which 14 people were killed.

Their war of words and the huge military build-up have brought the two countries close to full-scale war. Their last all-out conflict was in 1971.

Pakistan wants the Indians to withdraw from the border. India says the Pakistanis have not yet done enough to warrant a stand-down.

Powell said on Tuesday Musharraf's speech had helped to calm the confrontation and stabilising the diplomatic situation was now more important than an Indian army pull-back.

Speaking to reporters aboard his aircraft from Washington, Powell said Musharraf's speech and the positive Indian reaction to it showed "the rush toward conflict...has been slowed quite a bit".

"I'm more interested, not so much in watching armies move back...it's more important to make sure that the political and diplomatic situation is stabilised."

The two sides have been trading almost daily fire across the border in recent weeks and dozens of people on both sides have been killed and wounded. A Pakistani army officer said it was quiet along a ceasefire line separating the rivals in Kashmir on Wednesday for the second straight day.

"INSTANT RESPONSE"

Musharraf on Tuesday promised an instant response if India eased border tension but he also reiterated that Pakistan would never abandon political, diplomatic and moral support for what it sees as a legitimate struggle for self-determination by the people of Kashmir.

"India has to start the de-escalation and Pakistan will respond instantly," the official APP news agency quoted Musharraf as saying in a speech to a committee formed to publicise the long-standing Kashmir dispute.

"There should be no doubt in any mind about our commitment to the Kashmir cause and the people of Kashmir," he said.

"We will continue to support the just freedom struggle of Kashmiris politically, diplomatically and morally."

An official of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Kashmiri militant group said authorities had shut down its office in Milpur town in Pakistani-ruled Kashmir. The Harkat has not been banned but has been on a US list of terrorist organisations since 1998.

It was the first militant group office to be shut in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir but Harkat members say 25 of their offices have been shut and several hundred activists picked up in other parts of Pakistan since the weekend.

The seemingly intractable Kashmir problem has haunted relations between India and Pakistan since their creation from former British India in 1947. Two of their three wars have been fought over the Himalayan region, India's only Muslim majority state.

The United Nations adopted resolutions in the late 1940s and early 1950s calling for a plebiscite to determine the wishes of the Kashmiri people, but they were never implemented.

India rules about 45 percent of the region and Pakistan just over a third and China the remainder. Muslim separatist violence erupted in Indian-ruled Kashmir in 1989, and since then tens of thousands of people have been killed.

Pakistan would like to see Powell press India to accept international mediation in the dispute over Muslim majority Kashmir but Powell said only direct talks between the hostile neighbours would solve the problem.

"This problem of Kashmir is only going to be solved by direct dialogue between the two sides," he said.

"To the extent that the United States can help get that dialogue started on all of the issues that are outstanding between the two countries, including Kashmir, we would like to be helpful. But ultimately it has to be the two sides talking to each other."

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