Roundup: Diplomacy Continues to Defuse Indian-Pakistani Tension

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, June 05, 2002

Roundup: Diplomacy Continues to Defuse Indian-Pakistani Tension

Diplomatic efforts by leading countries and the United Nations are continuing to ease the tense standoff between India and Pakistan.

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Diplomatic efforts by leading countries and the United Nations are continuing to ease the tense standoff between India and Pakistan.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Tuesday met in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with, respectively, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, both of whom had rejected a direct meeting there.

Jiang held separate talks with Vajpayee and Musharraf on the tense situation in South Asia. The meetings were on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA).

Jiang said the tense relations between India and Pakistan have caused worldwide concern, and urged the two South Asian countries to resolve their disputes through peaceful means.

He said that only through dialogue and negotiations can a just and reasonable resolution be found for the disputes between Pakistan and India.

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who started his three-day visit to Moscow on Tuesday, said he hoped Russia, China and other international mediators could make a positive contribution to easing the tension between India and Pakistan.

He said he was working very closely with other world leaders totry to help de-escalate the India-Pakistan crisis, promoted by clashes over the Himalayan province of Kashmir

On Tuesday, President Putin of Russia, held separate one-on-onemeetings with Vajpayee and Musharraf, to try to mediate a meeting between the two, but failed to get the two hostile leaders together for face-to-face talks.

United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, dispatched by President George W. Bush to visit India and Pakistan this week, also called on the two countries to find ways to ease their tensions. He warned that Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network may seek to exploit the tensions in South Asia.

Observers said that India and Pakistan had missed a good chanceat the CICA to ease fears of war between the two nuclear-armed rivals. But Vajpayee made a surprising offer of joint patrols withPakistan in Kashmir.

However, the tense situation between India and Pakistan has noteased as there were reports that the two armies traded heavy fire on Wednesday over their border in Kashmir, and Pakistan expelled Indian High Commission member Kulwant Singh on spying charges.

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