OTTAWA, May 30: The Group of Eight leading nations will decide next month whether to launch a special coordinated initiative to try to defuse tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, G8 president Canada said on Thursday.

Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham told reporters that there was “some suggestion we might do a coordinated G8 action” in a bid to stave off clashes between the two neighbours, who have massed a million men on their border.

“We’re exploring that and the G8 political directors are actually talking now to see whether or not there’s a role the G8 itself could take independently,” Graham said.

A senior G8 official later said the political directors had discussed a number of proposals that would be presented to a meeting of G8 foreign ministers in mid-June in the British Columbia ski resort of Whistler.

“The directors have got to report to the foreign ministers now (so they can) look at the options and decide where we go from here,” the official told Reuters. “At this stage all options are on the table.”

“Everyone is really preoccupied about this situation, it’s clearly a huge threat...it just needs the wrong thing to set it off and if it then escalates we don’t know where that could lead,” added Graham, who said he would be speaking to both the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers on Friday.

“I’ll try to urge on them restraint and we’ll keep the pressure on them,” he said. Graham also revealed that Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien had spoken to the leaders of India and Pakistan on Saturday.

The G8 comprises the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations — Canada, Britain, the United States, Japan, Italy, France and Germany — plus Russia. The G8 official told Reuters that the political directors had agreed to coordinate visits to the region because “what you don’t want is to have people tripping over each other in the region, you don’t want to duplicate efforts.”—Reuters