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US envoy begins tour of Indo-Pak peace effort

AFP, Islamabad
On his third swing through the
US envoy Richard Armitage entered talks with Pakistan's leaders Thursday, kicking off a tour of South Asia to encourage a peace bid between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.
Armitage landed in Islamabad late Wednesday heading a delegation of nine senior United States officials including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Christina Rocca.
He met Foreign Secretary Riaz Kokhar before holding 45 minutes of talks with Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali. He then went into talks with Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kashuri and will meet President Pervez Musharraf later Thursday.
"The two sides discussed bilateral relations, the India-Pakistan situation, Afghanistan and Iraq," a Pakistani official said of the meeting with Kokhar, describing the mood as "positive."
volatile subcontinent in a year, Armitage is expected to press Pakistan to do more to stop Muslim militants crossing into the Indian zone of Kashmir, another Pakistani official said.
"The Americans would like to raise the issue of sealing the Line of Control (LoC) to block movement into Indian-controlled Kashmir," a foreign ministry official told AFP, referring to the dividing line between Pakistani and Indian zones of the disputed region.
Rebel incursions are at the heart of high-stakes tensions which have had the nuclear-ready subcontinent on edge for the past 17 months. The issue brought the hostile neighbours to the brink of a feared nuclear war 12 months ago.
It was Armitage who doused the flames then, spearheading an international diplomatic offensive between Islamabad and New Delhi and winning the war-averting pledge from Musharraf to perma FROM PAGE 12
nently end the infiltrations.
The pledge brought concessions from India and Armitage returned in August to ensure tensions were easing.
On this trip he is also expected to press for tougher action by Pakistan against militant groups waging a 14-year-old insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan state straddling Pakistan and India.
"They (US delegation) will also suggest action be taken against organisations they have put on the terror watch list, which now includes Hizbul Mujahedin," the official, who did not want to be identified, added.
Hizbul was one of three Kashmiri guerrilla groups placed on a new State Department watchlist of 38 terrorist organisations last week.
Pakistan will press Armitage on Pakistani prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the offi-
cial said.
The war on terrorism and security along Pakistan's porous western border with Afghanistan would also be on the agenda, but the key issue would be relations with India.
"Obviously the focus is India-Pakistan relations," the official told AFP.
Washington's top foreign policy troubleshooter had scheduled his trip before recent ice-breaking peace overtures between the fractious neighbours, triggered by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's April 18 offer to agree to Pakistan's long-held call for talks.
Jamali matched Vajpayee's olive branch with an unprecedented telephone call last week and a formal invitation to come to Pakistan for talks. He also offered to travel to New Delhi himself.
Both sides have since moved to normalise relations, pledging to reappoint ambassadors and resume transport links.
However the cautious cordiality has been tempered by India's negative response to Pakistan's peace overtures, calling them inadequate and demanding more action on Muslim militants and their training camps.
New Delhi severed or reduced diplomatic, travel, trade, and sporting ties with Islamabad after blaming Pakistan for a deadly attack on its parliament in December 2001.
Despite Pakistan's denials, India mobilised hundreds of thousands of troops to its border with Pakistan.
Pakistan followed suit and for the next 10 months a million troops eyeballed each other across their shared frontier, sparking global fears of the world's first-ever nuclear conflict.
Armitage heads to Afghanistan Friday en route to New Delhi, where he is due to meet Indian leaders on Saturday.