India Non-Committal on Peace Talks with Pakistan

03/06/2001| IslamWeb

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - India's foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, said Tuesday he had had no confirmation on whether he would meet his Pakistani counterpart, Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, this week for talks on ending a tense standoff between the nuclear powers when both attend a South Asian regional meeting in Nepal on January 4-6.
But a source close to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said there was ``no chance'' of talks at any level with Pakistan at the summit despite fears of war between the bitter rivals.
A Pakistani army official in Kashmir, the divided region that is a focus for tension between the neighboring states, said the situation remained highly volatile.
``It's still highly explosive and dangerous,'' he said in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani-held Kashmir. ``Any small incident could lead to the situation spiraling out of control.''
New Delhi and Islamabad have been under heavy international pressure to defuse the standoff triggered by an attack on India's parliament last month, which India has called an attempt to eradicate the leadership of the world's largest democracy.