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India
Rejects Pakistan's Meet Despite World Leaders' Call
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| Musharraf's offer of meet
rejected |
NEW DELHI, Dec. 29 (News Agencies) -
Despite calls from world leaders, India has rejected Pakistan's offer to hold a regional meeting in Nepal next week to hammer a way out of the current political and military deadlock, media reports said Saturday.
"Pakistan
hasn't met New Delhi's demands to ban two extremist movements accused of
carrying out the December 13 attacks on the Indian parliament," said Indian
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. "This renders the clime unfavorable for
holding the meet in Nepal."
Meanwhile, U.S. President George W. Bush, tried to curb escalating tensions in South Asia on Saturday, phoning the leaders of Pakistan and India from his ranch and urging them to quell unrest in their countries, CNN reported.
In separate calls, Bush spoke with Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bahari Vajpayee, and Pakistani President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said White House deputy press secretary, Scott McClellan. His calls followed up regular phone calls Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has made to both leaders.
The nuclear powers have traded barbs, mobilized their military forces near the disputed Kashmir region and taken other measures after a December 13 attack on India's parliament that left 14 people, including five attackers, dead.
Telephoning from Crawford, Texas, Bush urged Musharraf to take "additional, strong and decisive measures" to remove extremists and terrorists from Pakistan, said McClellan. India blames terrorist groups based in Pakistan for the New Delhi attack.
Terrorist groups in Pakistan, said Bush, threaten to "undermine Pakistan, provoke a war between India and Pakistan and destabilize the international coalition against terrorism."
Bush praised Musharraf for helping U.S. forces carry out military activities inside Afghanistan, and lauded Pakistan's president for recently ordering the arrest of 50 suspected terrorists, McClellan said.
As he did with Musharraf, Bush urged Vajpayee to "reduce tensions in the region," McClellan said.
In his conversation with Vajpayee, Bush said the United States was "determined to cooperate" with India to fight terrorism worldwide. The president also reiterated America's "outrage" over the December 13 attack, calling it a "strike against democracy."
The two south Asian nations have fought three wars -- two over the disputed Kashmir region -- since 1947.
Meanwhile, in Paris, French President, Jacques Chirac, urged the Indian Prime Minister on Saturday to restart talks with Pakistan to defuse a growing crisis between the two countries, Chirac's office said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
In a telephone call to the Indian leader from his official country residence at Bregancon in southeast France, Chirac said Pakistan and India should return to dialogue "to find a peaceful solution to the crisis."
The two countries have massed troops along their border, with Pakistan warning that its dispute with India was growing "dangerously tense," adding that any small act of provocation could snowball into a full-scale conflict between the nuclear rivals.
Chirac also repeated French condemnation of an attack on the Indian parliament over two weeks ago, in which 14 people, including the five assailants were killed, an attack which sparked the rise in military tensions.
In an earlier call, Chirac and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, expressed hope that India and Pakistan would resolve their differences by jointly fighting terrorism.
Interfax news agency quoted Putin's press department as saying the Russian leader had called for "drastic steps" to wipe out extremist groups in Pakistan.
"After the international community condemned the December 13 terrorist action against the Indian parliament, drastic steps must be taken to neutralize terrorist groups based in Pakistan", Putin said.
Chirac called Putin a day after urging the Pakistani President, also in a telephone conversation, to help de-escalate the conflict between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Putin and Chirac voiced "hope that India and Pakistan will manage to settle current problems through joint efforts in the fight against the terrorist threat," said Putin's press service, again quoted by Interfax.
India reiterated Saturday that the only way out of the current crisis was for Islamabad to take "credible, firm, substantive and visible action" against militant groups carrying out "terrorist" activities in India.
India claims it has proof that Pakistan-based groups carried out the attack on its parliament under the patronage of Pakistani military intelligence. Pakistan has denied the charge.
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