NEW DELHI, June 12: Responding to India’s standing request to use its territory in fight against terrorism, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strongly hinted on Wednesday that he now had the ruse to grant New Delhi the honour, having apparently found evidence of Al Qaeda militants near the Line of Control which they both could target together.

In the process, during his 18-hour tour of New Delhi, Mr Rumsfeld got the Indian army to prepare to ease its standoff with Pakistan in a phased measure, including pullback from Rajasthan and Punjab to be followed by a more gradual easing of its combat stance in Kashmir, diplomats and officials said.

They said that Mr Rumsfeld, at a meeting with India’s National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra, had offered help to establish a system of sensory devices to monitor incursions by militants into occupied Kashmir. He also offered a closer involvement of military experts from Britain and the United States to help keep watch on the increasingly volatile area, although the focus would now be on Al Qaeda, with cross-border infiltration in Kashmir becoming a residual issue.

“I have seen evidence — let me rephrase it — I have seen indications that there are, in fact, Al Qaeda operating near the Line of Control,” Mr Rumsfeld told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. “I have no precise information where or how many,” he said.

Diplomats were agreed that following Mr Rumsfeld’s talks the standoff was now quite nearly over, even though managing its political fallout could delay an immediate transition to major peace overtures between the two leaderships.

Observers said a key achievement of the current round of US diplomacy lay in the fact that the Indian army had set in motion a ‘monitoring mechanism’ to assess the situation ahead of its next peace moves. A Zee News report confirmed the development. It said a high-level team comprising officers from the Operations and Intelligence Directorate was being put in place to make daily reports on the situation on attempted infiltration across the LoC as well as international border facing Jammu and Kashmir.

The Hindu newspaper reinforced the idea, saying the Indian measures after Mr Rumsfeld’s tour could “include a reduction in the alert status of the army and the withdrawal of offensive forces, such as aircraft and tank formations, from forward positions near the international border with Pakistan”.

Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes, who held talks with Mr Rumsfeld, said “understandings” had been reached with the US on how to deal with some of the immediate problems to help create better atmosphere in the subcontinent.

Mr Rumsfeld said India was taking constructive steps to reduce tensions with Pakistan over disputed Kashmir. “We feel that there are steps being taken which are constructive and I must say that the leadership here in India has demonstrated their concern and their interest in seeing that things are resolved in an appropriate way,” Mr Rumsfeld said.

“[The US is] anxious to see the tension that exists between India and Pakistan improved,” Mr Rumsfeld said.