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More work needed to ease Indo-Pak tension: US

United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday that Washington would try to find additional ways to further reduce Indo-Pak tensions.

Rumsfeld, who was speaking at a press conference at the Foreign Press Centre of the state department, said that during his recent trip to India and Pakistan, the two countries indicated a desire for "continued United States involvement" and "expressed appreciation" of the efforts of President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders on behalf of peace.

"The United States," said Rumsfeld, "will continue to work with them to try to find additional ways to further reduce tensions."

Both sides, he said, had taken some steps to reduce tensions which, while not definitive and not fully tested, were having a positive effect.

Both the countries "are aware that the risks of war discourage travel to the region and, as a result, it damages the economies of each of those two countries as well as the people of those two countries," the defence secretary said.

Rumsfeld pointed out, in answer to questions on proliferation of weapons, that "whereas in earlier eras a war meant thousands dead... casualties in modern wars if weapons of mass destruction are used will be in the hundreds of thousands".

"Therefore, we have to be wiser and have better foresight as to what might take place," he said.

"There are armed forces on each side of the border and that is why the situation causes concern to the countries as well as to the rest of the world," Rumsfeld said.

PTI

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