The United States is prepared to play any role in efforts by India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute if invited by the two nuclear-armed neighbours, US President George W Bush said on Friday.
P Parameswaran
WASHINGTON: The United States is prepared to play any role in efforts by India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute if invited by the two nuclear-armed neighbours, US President George W Bush said on Friday.
Bush, speaking at a joint news conference with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said he noticed leaders of the two countries were determined to end their row over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, claimed in full by both.
"I asked the president, just like I would ask the prime minister of India: What can we do to help? What would you like the United States to do to facilitate an agreement?" the US leader said after hour-long talks with Musharraf.
"Would you like us to get out of the way? Would you like us not to show up? Would you like us to be actively involved? How can we help you, if you so desire, to achieve peace?" Bush said. "And that's the role of the United States, as far as I'm concerned."
Musharraf had briefed Bush on his recent agreement with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for top diplomats in New Delhi and Islamabad to resume high-level peace talks suspended in July after a series of bombings in Mumbai.
India suspended a peace process with Islamabad begun in 2004 after July's bombings in Mumbai, the country's financial capital, which killed 183 people and injured nearly 900.
They were blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
Pakistan denies that it supports militants fighting New Delhi's rule on the Indian side of disputed and divided Kashmir.
India has opposed the intervention of "third parties" in what it sees as a bilateral dispute over Kashmir while Pakistan has actively encouraged international mediation.
Over the last decade, the United States has played a critical role in preventing full-scale war between Pakistan and India but has been unsuccessful in convincing the two countries to address the fundamentals of their dispute, said Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.
Bush said he was "encouraged" by the agreement between Musharraf and Singh reached on the sidelines of Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba this month to move the peace talks forward.
"It is an indication that there is desire at the leadership level to solve this longstanding problem," he said.
Musharraf said that rather than leaving the task to officials and ministers, who were bogged down with "so many meetings," he and Singh should grapple head-on with the contentious issues that need to be tackled to bring about lasting peace.
"It is a time that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and myself, we sit down and reach decisions and solutions, because I always believe that one should never suffer from paralysis through analysis," he told a forum at the George Washington University on Friday.
Singh has accepted an invitation from Musharraf to visit Pakistan.
Musharraf warned of groups bent on derailing the peace process but said that there was "a resolve on both sides to move the process forward."
The groups, he said, "have rigid positions" and "don't want to move the peace process forward."
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, which is claimed in full by both. India accuses Pakistan of arming cross-border militants in divided Kashmir, a charge Islamabad vehemently denies.
More than 44,000 people have died in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, since the launch of an Islamic rebellion in the Himalayan territory in 1989.
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