A senior US envoy said Pakistani President Mr Pervez Musharraf had told him Pakistan would not initiate a war with nuclear rival India, and that Washington expected similar assurances from New Delhi.
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President of Pakistan Mr Pervez Musharraf. Photo: Reuters - file
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"President Musharraf has made it very clear that he is searching for peace and he won't be the one to initiate a war," US Deputy Secretary of State Mr Richard Armitage told reporters after what he called wonderful discussions with President Musharraf for nearly two hours.
"I will be hopefully getting the same type of assurances tomorrow in Delhi," he said of his planned talks with leaders in the Indian capital on the second leg of a mission to try to defuse tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Mr Armitage, who arrived in Islamabad earlier today and also held separate talks with Foreign Minister Mr Abdul Sattar, said President Musharraf's assurance he would do everything possible to prevent a war was a very good basis on which to proceed.
"I would note that the conversations we had with President Musharraf made it very clear to me that he wants to do everything which he can," he said. "I think we have a very good basis on which to proceed."
India and Pakistan have massed a million soldiers along their tense frontier and have traded artillery and gunfire daily for the past three weeks in skirmishes that have killed scores of people and wounded hundreds of others.
Mr Armitage (57) a former special forces veteran with a reputation for frank talk, arrived a day after India said there was room for many proposals to help end the stand-off and avoid a fourth war between the two powers.
His tour follows US President Mr George W. Bush's appeal to leaders of the two nuclear-armed rivals to step back from the abyss.
President Bush telephoned President Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, raising the profile of an international offensive to head off war, as the United States and Britain urged their citizens to leave the region.