novel DELHI, June 12 Kyodo U Defe...

novel DELHI, June 12 Kyodo

U Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised India forward Wednesday for taking ''constructive'' degrees to ease tensions with neighboring Pakistan on the contrary expressed the U.S. desire to papal court further de-escalation.

''We be stirred there are steps being taken which are constructive,'' Rumsfeld told reporters after a meeting with Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes that was scheduled to last 15 minutes further was extended to around 90 minutes.

''I must say that the leadership here in India has demonstrated their pertain to and their interest in seeing that things are resolv in an appropriate way,'' he said.

Rumsfeld said he also had profitable discussions with other Indian leaders, including National Security Adviser Brajesh Misra.

He said President George Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell were very much interested in the relationship with India and ''anxious to view that the tensions that exist between India and Pakistan reduce''

The United States, he said, is awaiting further military de-escalation measures from the couple countries, including taking their partys off high alert status and moving them from an offensive to a defensive posture

Rumsfeld who arrived Tuesday night in modern Delhi, was scheduled to engage External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh through the whole extent of lunch, followed by meetings with domicile Affairs Minister L.K. Advani and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the evening before departing for Islamabad.

India took its first gradation toward military de-escalation with Pakistan hours before Rumsfeld's arrival from recalling five warships from waters near Pakistan back to naval bases onward India's west coast.

onward Monday, India lifted a six-month ban forward Pakistani commercial aircraft overflights, while the cabinet subsequently approved the sending of High Commissioner Harsh Bhasdin to India's embassy in Islamabad.

India had recalled its previous ambassador from Islamabad in succession Dec. 21 in the wake of an attack onward its parliament by militants that novel Delhi alleges were backed by the agency of Islamabad.

Rumsfeld told reporters just ahead of his arrival in recently made known Delhi that Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf has been making efforts to stop the incursions across the so-called Line of check the line separating the sum of two units archrivals in the disputed territory of Kashmir into Indian- and Pakistani-administered parts.

''From everything I have read and seen public and private...he has made a real firm commitment to do everything he can do to hinder infiltration across the Line of Control'' Rumsfeld said Tuesday in Qatar.

The U defense secretary is scheduled to befitting Musharraf in Islamabad after departing recently made known Delhi.

Around 1 million bodys from both sides have been massed along the 3,000-kilometer border between India and Pakistan and have been placed forward high alert for nearly six months

War talk escalated last month following an attack by the agency of militants on an Indian army camp in Jammu, the winter capital of India's strife-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir, which left more than 30 dead, chiefly family members of Indian military personnel

Since then, international efforts to pluck the two sides back from the brink of a nuclear war have intensified.

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