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India-Pakistan: Powell Plans Visit to South Asia U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to visit Pakistan and India this month in an attempt to further reduce tensions in the region, he said yesterday (see GSN, July 2). “We are anxious to get through this crisis and see a dialogue begin between the two sides so that they can start to move forward to find a solution to the problem in Kashmir ultimately,” Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He plans to visit the two nuclear-armed rivals on his way to a meeting of Asian countries in Brunei that begins July 31, a senior State Department official said. Tensions surged between India and Pakistan in December 2001 when militants attacked the Indian Parliament and in May when others raided an Indian Army camp. The two countries began to back away from the brink of war last month after visits by high-level U.S. officials and a promise from Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to crack down on militant infiltration (see GSN, June 25). U.S. officials believe militant infiltration into India’s portion of the disputed Kashmir territory has decreased significantly, but they want Musharraf to continue to crack down, a U.S. official said. “We do want to keep the ball rolling in reducing the tension further,” the official said. “We know Musharraf has made a commitment, and we want to make sure he keeps it.” Powell said he has “spent an enormous amount of time” talking to both leaders on the telephone and wants both countries to “understand that the United States is interested in them beyond this crisis” (Elaine Monaghan, Reuters/Boston Globe, June 10). As long as the dispute over Kashmir remains unresolved, there will be more crises and pressures for arms competition between the two countries, Lee Feinstein, former deputy director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, wrote in the current issue of Arms Control Today (see GSN, June 10). “Sustained American diplomatic engagement needs to supplant crisis diplomacy as Washington’s main tool for reducing the risk of war between these two nuclear nations,” Feinstein wrote (Lee Feinstein, Arms Control Today, July/August). For further information, see: Stimson Center Background on Kashmir
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