Roundup: International Community Boosts Efforts to Return India, Pakistan to Peace

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, June 03, 2002

Roundup: International Community Boosts Efforts to Return India, Pakistan to Peace

The international community is urging India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and avoid war as recent escalating conflicts between the two countries draw close attention from the world.

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The international community is urging India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and avoid war as recent escalating conflicts between the two countries draw close attention from the world.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin will meet Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, respectively, on June 4 in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan.

The meetings are arranged as a result of consultations with Pakistan and India, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in Beijing Monday.

Jiang is scheduled to leave Monday for Kazakhstan to attend thesummit meeting of the Conference for Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia.

Kong said China has made clear its position on the tension between India and Pakistan, and sincerely hopes the two countries will show the utmost restrain and resolve their disputes through negotiation and dialogue in a bid to maintain peace and stability in south Asia.

United States President George W. Bush is expected to dispatch Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to South Asia this week on a trouble-shooting mission to help defuse the current conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, while U.S. Deputy Secretary ofState Richard Armitage is also slated to be on the subcontinent onJune 6-7.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to mediate betweenIndian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani PresidentPervez Musharraf on the sideline of a summit of the Council on Cooperation and Confidence Measures in Asia. This was to be held on June 3-5 in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan. Putin will have separate meetings with the two rival leaders to persuade them to "put confrontation in the past".

But last week, India virtually ruled out any possibility of a meeting between Vajpayee and Musharraf in Kazakhstan, saying that Putin had merely said Vajpayee and Musharraf could meet in Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, the Group of Eight foreign ministers called on Indiaand Pakistan to resume dialogue to end the present crisis immediately.

A statement, released on May 31 by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department on behalf of the G-8, said the G-8 foreign ministers are gravely concerned about the risks inherent in the current crisis between India and Pakistan, and these could destabilize theregion and beyond.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who ended a peace missionto South Asia on May 29, said the risk of war was high but not inevitable.

Straw's optimism was echoed by Japanese Senior Vice Foreign Minister Seiken Sugiura, who said Pakistani Foreign Minister AbdulSattar promised him that Islamabad would step up efforts to rein in militants.

Japan, the biggest aid donor to India and Pakistan, said Tokyo could play its aid card to try to bring the rivals back from the brink of war. Japan had also suggested that Islamabad allow international observers to "independently verify whether the militants' training camps had been disbanded" or not.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), on June 2, also urged the two South Asian countries to practise self-restraint in order to ease their escalating tensions over the issue of Kashmir.

Jordanian King Abdullah II on, May 28, called for dialogue between India and Pakistan to solve their disputes peacefully and avoid military confrontations in south Asia.

Chairman of the Afghan Interim Government Hamid Karzai said, onMay 30, that the situation between India and Pakistan was very dangerous. The Afghan leader hoped that the tension between the two countries would be reduced and removed, while urging all countries in the region to join hands to curb terrorism.

The Indonesian government also urged India and Pakistan to exercise self-restraint on the escalating bloody-conflict and try to find a peaceful solution through diplomatic channels.

India and Pakistan have mobilized a million men along their border, backed by fighter jets and heavy artillery, in a build-up triggered by a raid on India's parliament last December.

There are fears from all over the world that the conflict between the two countries would quickly escalate into nuclear war that could kill thousands of millions of people and obliterate themain cities of both countries. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since Britain partitioned the subcontinent in 1947.

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