BERLIN, May 27: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said on Monday that Europe would do all it could to help foster a peaceful resolution to the conflict between India and Pakistan.

But they said it was up to the two South Asian nuclear powers themselves to step back from the brink.

Straw told a joint news conference with Fischer that the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir was one of “the most serious of all conflicts”, adding: “The world would be astonished and bewildered if those two nations tried to solve this dispute by the use of arms.”

Earlier, in a speech to German ambassadors in Berlin, he warned that an escalation of the hostilities could bring “death, destruction, disease and economic collapse” to the region “lasting for years and years”.

Straw, who was to leave later on Monday to visit Islamabad and New Delhi, called the conflict “a fundamentally bilateral dispute” and cautioned that there were “limits to external persuasion” that mediators could exert on the two sides.

“Decisions must be taken by the parties themselves,” Straw said.

Fischer said Germany too would lend its diplomatic support to bring about an end to the “dangerous situation” and called on both sides to reject the use of “terrorism” so events did “not come to a confrontation with incalculable consequences”.

“We will do everything we can to prevent an escalation of the conflict,” Fischer said.—AFP