A United States envoy on Thursday said Pakistan’s president assured him that he wants to do everything he can to avoid war with India.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage also said the US military effort against al-Qaida in Western Pakistan has not been affected by the crisis in Kashmir, or the rising tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
During a meeting President Pervez Musharraf ”made it clear to me he wants to do everything he can to avoid war and I think that’s a very good basis on which to proceed,” Armitage said. ”President Musharraf has made it very clear that he is searching for peace, that he won’t be the one to initiate war, and I’ll be looking for the same type of assurance tomorrow from Delhi.”
Washington has expressed concern about how the India-Pakistan tension might affect efforts to nab al-Qaida and Taliban fighters along Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan. Pakistan has already pulled out some troops in the effort for possible redeployment to its eastern frontier with India.
”Some elements have moved, but the main activity on the western border of Pakistan seems unaffected in my view,” Armitage said.
Armitage, who has a reputation for blunt talk, arrived on Thursday morning and quickly went into a whirlwind series of meetings with Foreign Secretary Inam ul Haque, Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and Musharraf.
He arrived a day after India made a conciliatory gesture to Pakistan, calling for joint monitoring of the Kashmir frontier — a proposal that Pakistan played down as old and unlikely to work.
Armitage said he would discuss that proposal with Indian officials when he flies to new Delhi on Friday.
”It doesn’t do any good to discuss these things in public,” he said.
An Indian army spokesperson reported sporadic gunfire overnight across the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Paksitan, but said artillery fell silent hours before Armitage arrived. No casualties were reported.
However, Indian police reported seven people — three soldiers, three insurgents and one civilian — were shot dead on Thursday in separate incidents on the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan region.
Six other suspected Islamic insurgents were killed in an attack on Wednesday on their hideout in India’s portion of the disputed territory, Indian authorities also said.
They were said to be members of the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, one of more than a dozen guerrilla groups fighting for Kashmir’s independence or its merger with Pakistan since 1989. More than 60 000 people have been killed in the fighting.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Wednesday said India and Pakistan should work together to patrol the border.
It was the first indication in the six-month stand-off that India might cooperate with Pakistan to end the Kashmir insurgency and solve the dispute that dates to 1947.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry responded that if the Indian proposal were serious, it should be conveyed formally. ”The proposal is not new,” Information Minister Nisar Memon said. ”Given the state of Pakistan-India relations, mechanisms for joint patrolling are unlikely to work.”