Powell seeks to allay India's Kashmir concerns
Powell seeks to allay India's Kashmir concerns
Reuters New Delhi
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried on Wednesday to smooth ruffled feathers over remarks he made on disputed Kashmir which irked India, already anxious about Washington's warming ties with Pakistan.
Powell, holding talks in New Delhi after a visit to Islamabad, said the United States and India were two great democracies and natural allies.
He played down a remark made in Islamabad that disputed Kashmir was central to the relationship between India and Pakistan, saying it was more important to look at his other comments calling for dialog between the nuclear rivals.
"I didn't say 'a central'," he said. "If you look at it carefully I said central in the sense that it is an important issue, and to suggest that it isn't wouldn't be accurate," he told a news conference.
New Delhi denies the dispute over Kashmir, which both countries claim, is central to its relationship with Islamabad.
Powell, declaring that the United States and India stand "shoulder to shoulder against terrorism," strongly condemned on Wednesday terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals in Indian-held Kashmir.
Powell and India's Home Affairs Minister Lal Krishna Advani signed a pact Wednesday to fight international crime and terrorism.
The treaty will strengthen an extradition agreement signed by the two countries in 1999 and regularize channels for law enforcement cooperation between the two countries. It also allows for the exchange of evidence for use in criminal trials.
Powell said Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has accepted an invitation to visit Washington on Nov. 9.
India was one of the first countries to condemn the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and to offer generous cooperation in the anti-terrorism struggle.
"The United States and India stand united against terrorism and that includes terrorism directed against India as well," Powell said. Tensions between India and Pakistan rose dramatically after an Oct. 1 incident in which a car bomb killed about 40 people in the Indian sector of Kashmir.
The political fallout from the incident was one of the reasons Powell decided to visit the two South Asian rivals. He wants both to focus their energies on the anti-terrorism struggle.
The Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba has threatened to launch new suicide attacks in India in retaliation for the strikes against Pakistani posts, the Press Trust of India reported Wednesday.