| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| India, Pakistan tone down war talk |
| 2002-06-09 |
| India and Pakistan have toned down their warlike rhetoric and sounded more conciliatory notes, but cross-border shelling persisted Sunday in Kashmir. International leaders have been urging a peaceful resolution, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who visited the region last week, said tensions have come down "measurably." The Indian government said Saturday that Pakistan appeared to be making moves "in the right direction" and Islamabad said the "ice has broken." But India is insisting that Pakistan end cross-border attacks by Muslim militants who want Kashmir to be independent or merge with Islamic Pakistan. Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has pledged to end infiltration across the border. India indicated it would wait to see whether it can detect improvements in Kashmir. "I think you couldn't say the crisis is over, but I think you could say the tensions are down measurably," Armitage said Saturday in Estonia, where he went after meeting with Musharraf in Islamabad and with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi. Armitage said the Indian leadership might return some diplomats it has withdrawn from Islamabad and had discussed "some ratcheting down of some sort of military tension." All this nicey-nice will last until the next time Qazi's proxies shoot up something important. As soon as the hubbub dies down, the Masked Avengers will resume swarming over the Line of Control, hot to get themselves some infidels. But nuclear war may not be in the offing in the next week, so that's probably a good thing. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |