Powell: South Asia Has Cooled Off

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that he believed tensions had been eased considerably between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan.

Powell, who visited Pakistan on Wednesday and arrived in the Indian capital on Thursday night, has urged the South Asian rivals to find a diplomatic solution to their month-long standoff.

Powell credited Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for cooling things down with a weekend speech that condemned terrorism and vowed to curb Islamic militants accused of attacks in India.

"I don't think it's as dangerous as it was a weekend or two ago," Powell told CBS News Thursday.

"I think there has been some progress as a result of President Musharraf's speech this past weekend and the actions he has taken — actions that are a direct response to concerns that India had," Powell said. "The Indians have responded positively; they want to see more action."

On Friday, Powell will meet with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his national security adviser before heading to Nepal.

On the eve of Powell's visit, India announced it was open to dialogue with its South Asian nuclear rival and called Musharraf's speech "path-breaking."

"The speech which Gen. Musharraf has made is important, is in a way path-breaking," said Indian Home Minister Lal K. Advani. "I have not heard earlier any other Pakistani leader denouncing theocracy in the manner in which Gen. Musharraf did."

Advani's comments, a clear change of India's previous lukewarm response to Musharraf's speech on Saturday, came just as he returned from Washington and on the eve of Powell's two-day visit.

Powell, who arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday, praised Musharraf for launching the crackdown on Islamic militants.

"We need a campaign against terrorism, not a campaign with these two countries fighting one another," Powell said.

Tensions remained high in the disputed province of Kashmir. A bomb blast in a crowded market Thursday night killed one shopper and injured 10 others, police said.

The explosive was planted just outside the market in the heart of Jammu, the winter capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state. Police, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not immediately blame Islamic militants for the blast.

Earlier in the day, Powell made a brief visit to Afghanistan, the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Kabul since Henry Kissinger in 1974.

Kissinger, on a private visit to India to meet with business leaders, met Thursday with K.C. Pant, the government's chief negotiator with Kashmiri separatist groups.

The secretary of tate under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger denied playing any U.S. government role in de-escalating tensions between India and Pakistan.

"I have come here to educate myself on a few facts about Kashmir and there was no specific agenda of our talks with Pant," Kissinger told the Press Trust of India news agency.

He said he believed Washington should play no role in mediating the Kashmiri conflict, as demanded by Musharraf.

India and Pakistan have massed hundreds of thousands of troops on their frontier since a Dec. 13 suicide attack on the Indian Parliament, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups and Pakistan's spy agency. Pakistan and the two groups denied involvement.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan province, which both countries claim. India accuses Pakistan of fighting a proxy war by funding and arming more than a dozen Islamic militant groups in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The 12-year insurgency has cost more than 32,000 lives.

On Saturday, Musharraf said he would not allow militants to conduct terrorist acts in the name of Kashmir. However, he said his country would continue to support their claim of independence for the mostly Muslim region or a merger with Pakistan.

In his speech, Musharraf announced a ban on five groups, including Islamic and Kashmiri militants. He also announced restrictions on religious schools that have become terrorist breeding grounds, and authorities have arrested nearly 2,000 suspected militants in a nationwide crackdown.

On Thursday, police in Pakistan arrested scores of suspected militants in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and sealed dozens more offices of Islamic extremists elsewhere in the country.

India still maintains it will not pull its troops back from the border until it sees more concrete action, though New Delhi was open to dialogue.

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