Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham says the Group of Eight nations are trying to decide whether they can have a role in defusing tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
Mr. Graham said yesterday that officials from the eight countries -- Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- were discussing whether the organization could come up with some co-ordinated action to talk both sides down from the brink of war over Kashmir.
"Everybody's really preoccupied about this situation," Mr. Graham said. "It's clearly a huge threat. There's so many troops on the border now. It's a hair-trigger thing that just needs the wrong thing to set it off. If it escalates, who knows where it will lead?"
Mr. Graham will talk today with the foreign ministers from both countries. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is in the region now and U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be there next week.
"We are making it very clear to both Pakistan and India that war will not serve their interest," President George W. Bush said yesterday, adding that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf must stop incursions by Islamic extremists across the Kashmiri line of separation.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien spoke to Gen. Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on May 25, urging Gen. Musharraf to make good on his commitments to fight terrorism and Mr. Vajpayee to give international diplomacy time to work.
The conflict is threatening to muscle aside the Israel-Palestine conflict as the main agenda item when the G8 foreign ministers meet in Whistler, B.C., in mid-June and could force major changes to the leaders' agenda in Kananaskis, Alta., June 26-27, despite Mr. Chrétien's insistence that nothing will derail him from emphasizing Africa at that meeting.
India and Pakistan have mobilized nearly one million troops along the border since a December terrorist attack on India's parliament and recent attack by Kashmiri militants.
Pakistan said yesterday that it might send more troops to the disputed territory, moving soldiers from the country's eastern border where they are helping American troops in the hunt for al-Qaeda operatives.
British defence staff chief Admiral Michael Boyce said yesterday in Afghanistan that the Kashmiri build-up is already having an effect on allied efforts against al-Qaeda.
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