NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 12 June — India yesterday called back a fleet of warships deployed off the coast of Pakistan, as the United States noted “hopeful signs” that war between the nuclear-armed neighbors could be averted.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said, however, that the redeployment of the warships and India’s decision to reopen its airspace to Pakistani civilian aircraft was only a “very small beginning.”
“We expect substantive steps from the Indian side now to proceed further,” he told reporters in Abu Dhabi.
“We are watching for more substantive actions from their side” to initiate dialogue on the Kashmiri dispute. “It’s a very small beginning, let’s see what happens in the future ... Whatever they are doing at the moment is easing their own problems.”
Responding in New Delhi, Indian Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Nirupama Rao described New Delhi’s gestures as “important steps.”
“They are significant steps and ... are an expression of our desire to reduce tensions and pursue the path of peace because to peace there is no alternative,” Rao told a media briefing.
“I believe the Pakistan government should recognize the importance of these moves and the fact that these are substantial gestures.”
US President George W. Bush said yesterday that progress had been made in defusing tensions between India and Pakistan, but warned that the threat of war between the nuclear powers had not passed.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who arrived in New Delhi yesterday on a mission to ease tension between India and Pakistan, warned that while diplomatic tensions between the two countries may have leveled off, the situation on the ground had not improved.
Rumsfeld, who flew to South Asia from a visit to Gulf Arab states, was due to meet Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and other Indian leaders today before moving on to Islamabad for talks with President Pervez Musharraf.
“I cannot say that I see a trendline that is getting better or worse,” Rumsfeld told reporters on the flight from Qatar to New Delhi.
Rumsfeld said he came as “a friend” — not a mediator — with a series of proposals aimed at coaxing both sides to scale back the hair trigger military confrontation.
He refused to describe the proposals, but said it was not an all-or-nothing plan for ending the conflict.
“It isn’t this or nothing,” he said. “It is a set of linkages, it is a whole series of things, any one of which might be helpful to them, leading to a step-by-step de-escalation of the situation.” Rumsfeld warned that militants, including Al-Qaeda members, might try to create an incident in Kashmir that would draw India and Pakistan into a war.
Asked if there was evidence to show Al-Qaeda members were in Kashmir, he replied: “I have seen intelligence that reports that people are saying they are in there.”
In divided Kashmir, troops traded heavy artillery fire again overnight and during the day yesterday, killing eight people — six of them Pakistanis and two Indians — according to sources from both sides.
Indian Navy spokesman Rahul Gupta told AFP orders were given yesterday for a withdrawal of the Indian war fleet from the Arabian Sea. “The whole process will take at least two days,” Gupta said.
He said the ships being withdrawn included five from India’s eastern fleet.
