Powell to urge India, Pak. to avoid flare-up

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, OCT. 16. On the day the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, urged India and Pakistan to ``stand down'' during the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan, his senior officials went about repeating that message here with the conviction that the Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, will have conveyed the same message personally to Islamabad and New Delhi.

The National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, when asked about reports of the Indian army firing across the line of control, said the express purpose of Gen. Powell's visit to the sub-continent was to talk and to counsel the leaders of India and Pakistan ``on the importance of stability in the zone of control; importance of not having a flare up in Kashmir.''

Dr. Rice recalled the flurry of phone calls that had been going out in the last two weeks that included calls from Mr. Bush to the leaders of India and Pakistan; Gen. Powell had also talked to the two leaders; and Dr. Rice, for her part, had been in touch with her counterparts.

``It's been a lot of back and forth. I think we'll have to go and see what's actually happening here; the reports are pretty preliminary. But there is a lot of diplomatic infrastructure in place to try to damp this down,'' Dr. Rice remarked.

At the State Department, the deputy spokesman, Mr. Philip Reeker, argued that Washington has ``called for restraint on both sides, for dialogue, for pursuing a peaceful resolution through a bilateral dialogue that takes into account the wishes of the Kashmiri people.''

The Bush administration is aware of where India is on terrorism. That said, Washington is not in a position to publicly rebuke Islamabad for the goings-on in Jammu and Kashmir. Given the magnitude of the current complexities, it is highly unlikely that the Republican administration would want to be seen weakening the position of the Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

In fact, the U.S., does not want anyone to up the ante or rock the boat by pursuing an agenda that did not quite tally with that of the campaign in Afghanistan, the Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

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Section  : International
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