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World Leaders Try to Ease Pakistani-Indian Tensions
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mounts on India and Pakistan
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AMMAN, Jan. 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the South Asian region suffers increasing tensions between India and Pakistan, world leaders have been trying to play a role in easing tensions to avoid the impending war.
Jordan's Petra news agency reported Tuesday that King Abdullah II of Jordan urged dialogue in a telephone conversation with Pakistani President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on the crisis between India and Pakistan.
Petra said the conversation late Monday was initiated by the Pakistani leader.
The king said that more than ever the world needed "peace and dialogue", and called for "serious efforts to settle the differences (between Islamabad and New Delhi) by dialogue and peaceful means."
British premiere, Tony Blair, will also arrive in Islamabad next Monday for a one-day visit aimed at reducing tensions between India and Pakistan, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry official, who refused to be named, said Tuesday.
"Tony Blair will be here on January 7," the official told AFP. "It will be a day's visit."
The purpose is to lower tensions between India and Pakistan, he said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Blair starts Friday a South Asian tour that will also take him to Bangladesh and India.
British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, had a telephone conversation Monday with his Pakistani counterpart, Abdul Sattar, in which he urged Pakistan to hold talks with India to end the tense military standoff along the border of the nuclear-armed rivals.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani newspaper, The Nation, said Tuesday that Chinese Foreign Minister, Tang Jiaxuan, Monday had separate telephone conversations with his counterparts in Pakistan and India, urging the two countries to seek a peaceful solution to their differences.
In his talks with both Pakistan’s Abdul Sattar and India’s Jaswant Singh, Tang said a less tense situation in South Asia would help the development of post-war Afghanistan, the Chinese Xinhua news agency reported.
It was in the interest of both Pakistan and India that they exercise utmost restraint and ease their tensions as soon as possible, he added.
In his talks with India’s Singh, Tang said bilateral relations between India and Pakistan had a direct impact on the situation in the entire South Asian region, which again was of “vital importance” for the solution of the Afghan issue.
“India, as a big country in South Asia, can play a more positive role in this regard,” Tang said according to Xinhua.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hamid-Reza Asefi, said that the Iranian government is “concerned” at rising tension between India and Pakistan and wants to use its “good relations with both countries” to prevent a war.
“The region has already suffered a number of crises and hasn’t the capacity to sustain any more”, Asefi told a press conference. “President Mohammed Khatami and Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharazi, have expressed their concern, but Iran will try to avoid an unnecessary war.”
“We are certain that the officials of both countries understand the situation and will not reach this point” of becoming involved in a war, Asefi said. The only solution to the crisis was dialogues, since “the region is unstable enough”.
“We have good relations with the two nations, we are going to maintain and develop these relations, and in fact, that’s an advantage for Iran to contribute to the betterment of ties” between India and Pakistan.
Khatami offered Iran’s good offices Saturday in easing the tension, calling on India and Pakistan to settle their dispute peacefully and wisely through compromise.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani daily newspaper, the Frontier Post, said that a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry told the Pakistan news agency PTI that it supported New Delhi in its war against Pakistan.
“We do not want any harm done to our friend India,” the Israeli official said. He added that Israel believed “New Delhi would take right steps in right direction to defuse the tension in the region."
There is a growing defense cooperation between India and Israel. Recently, the two countries signed a two-billion-dollar defense deal in which Israel is to provide the latest communications and electronic equipment and other weaponry to India.
Some Pakistanis say the pact sends alarming signals regarding the country's security.
"Pakistan has conveyed its concern over the recent defense deal between India and Israel, which might turn out to be a security concern for us," a senior foreign office official told IslamOnline.
However, Major General Rashid Qureishi, a spokesperson for Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, told the BBC radio in an interview Monday that Pakistan will consider any Indian military strike against its territory as an act of war, according to Kashmir Times.
Qureishi said Pakistan would respond in kind to any Indian cross-border incursions against his country.
"If India makes the mistake of launching an attack, air or ground, on anything on the land frontier, or violates the air frontiers of Pakistan, Pakistan will respond in a reciprocal fashion," he told BBC Radio.
Asked if Pakistan would then be at war, he replied: "Pakistan will consider that an act of war."
India accuses Pakistan of backing groups suspected of a bomb attack on the Indian parliament earlier this month and of not doing enough to crush the militants. Yesterday, Pakistan detained a second militant leader.
Qureishi denied his country was harboring training facilities for militants.
"There is no terrorist training camp in Pakistan," he said. India has deployed military forces along the border, withdrawn its envoy to Islamabad and halved its mission there, closed cross-border bus and train services and banned Pakistan International Airlines Corp from Indian airspace.
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