Search the Internet          Tips

Powell rules out Indo-Pak nuclear war

T V Parasuram in Washington

On the eve of his visit to New Delhi and Islamabad, US Secretary of State Collin Powell on Monday said India and Pakistan will have to "pull back", but ruled out chances of a nuclear confrontation in the subcontinent.

He said the conflict between India and Pakistan has stabilised, but an armed conflict cannot not ruled out until there is a mutual troops pullback.

"We need India and Pakistan to pull back. We need to reduce the possibility that something could spark conflict between the two sides," he told the media.

Powell said that there is a danger of war every time two armies are on hair trigger alert.

On Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's speech on Saturday, he said it has improved the prospects for progress when he travels to the region.

"I think we will have quite a bit to work," he commented in separate interviews with two cable television networks, CNN and Fox.

Musharraf, the Secretary of State said, should be praised for declaring that "extremism and terrorism have no place in the Pakistani society" and for calling Islam "a religion of peace and tolerance."

Meanwhile, Senator Joseph Lieberman said that he was encouraged by India's favourable responses thus far to Musharraf's "principled" statement.

He also urged both countries to pull back their troops from the border so that an accident or an extremist act does not start a war. He urged President Bush to "immediately send a high-level envoy to the region to help seize the moment of opportunity between India and Pakistan."

Lieberman, who recently led a congressional delegation to Pakistan, said in a statement that though the parties themselves want progress, they may not be able to make it "without our encouragement and mediation".

About the delegation's visit to Pakistan, he said it had an excellent meeting with President Musharraf, "in which we thanked him for Pakistan's great support of our military operations against terrorists in Afghanistan and urged him to do the same inside Pakistan".

PTI

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report