Pakistan won't unleash war, says Musharraf

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has told a senior United States envoy he will not start a war with India, as diplomacy appeared to be making headway in averting a conflagration between the nuclear-armed foes.

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who was due in New Delhi last night, said after talks in Islamabad that Musharraf's comments were a good basis on which to proceed.

US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked by telephone yesterday and discussed the tensions between India and Pakistan, the White House said.

Bush praised Putin's efforts to keep the two nuclear powers from going to war over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Putin held separate meetings with Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at a regional conference this week in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Bush and Putin agreed "to continue mutual efforts to de-escalate tensions", Fleischer said.

Armitage was in Islamabad on a mission to try to defuse tensions over Kashmir that have sparked fears of a fourth war between the nuclear-armed rivals. Two of their three wars have been fought over Muslim-majority Kashmir.

"President Musharraf has made it very clear that he is searching for peace and he won't be the one to initiate a war," said Armitage.

"I will be hopefully getting the same type of assurances tomorrow in Delhi."

India and Pakistan have massed a million soldiers along their tense frontier and have traded artillery and gunfire daily for the past three weeks in skirmishes that have killed scores of people and wounded hundreds.

India yesterday dismissed a British newspaper report that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would propose a joint Anglo-American military monitoring force for Kashmir when he visits the region next week.

"It is absolutely unnecessary to have third-party monitoring," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao, calling the story speculative.

She said an Indian proposal for joint patrolling by India and Pakistan - one rejected by Islamabad as unworkable - "was a very serious initiative".

Armitage said his talks with Musharraf also touched on how to monitor incursions by Muslim guerrillas that have stoked a 12-year rebellion in Hindu-dominated India's only Muslim-majority state.

"We're discussing all sorts of monitoring mechanisms, without any prejudices one way or another," Armitage said.

Stock markets in India and Pakistan have risen this week - the Bombay market was up about 4 per cent and the Karachi market about 5 per cent for the week so far - partly on hopes that US diplomacy would achieve a breakthrough.

Indian and Pakistani troops again traded heavy artillery and machinegun fire yesterday across their Kashmiri frontier, as frontline villages in Pakistan practised civil defence drills and thousands of foreign residents left the two countries.



In Spain, a senior Pakistani envoy conceded there was a risk that a war could go nuclear but said Islamabad considered such an option unthinkable.

"The option is there, but it's quite unthinkable and Pakistan has never factored this capability in as an option to rely on," said retired General Jehangir Karamat, touring European capitals to put across Pakistan's position.

"Pakistan relies on its conventional force capability."

- REUTERS

Feature: The Kashmir conflict