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G8 ministers focus on India, Pakistan crisis

David Ljunggren in Whistler (British Columbia)

Foreign ministers from the world's leading nations opened a two-day meeting on Wednesday with the focus on what they could do to help ease tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

The ministers from the Group of Eight nations -- Canada, Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Italy, Germany and Russia -- will also discuss the Middle East crisis and the progress made to combat terrorism in the wake of the September 11 suicide attacks in the United States.

India and Pakistan -- involved in yet another dispute over Kashmir -- have amassed a million soldiers along their border.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is in the South Asia region, said on Wednesday that India had taken constructive steps to move away from a possible conflict but that Washington was anxious to see tensions lowered further.

Canadian officials said the meeting would also look at possible measures to find a long-term solution to Kashmir, the trigger for two of the three wars India and Pakistan have fought since gaining independence from Britain in 1948.

"Every spring when the snows melt in Kashmir the tensions rise once again. Do we want to be dealing with the same situation next year, or is there a way out of all this?" one official told reporters.

Reuters

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