June 14, 2002	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1423

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NEW DELHI, June 13: India’s militarist bellicosity and Pakistan’s matching bravado continued on Thursday to drive out worried foreigners from the region despite emerging signs that a nuclear standoff between the two nuclear-armed rivals was abating, news reports and analysts said.

The Press Trust of India reported, not without embarrassing New Delhi and possibly Islamabad, that although “there has been de-escalation in Indo-Pak tension”, British and US consulate offices in Kolkota, for example, were still urging their citizens to leave India.

“A woman staffer at the American Centre left for home last weekend after the United States Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington asked those in the non-essential category to leave the country for the time being,” Director of American Centre in Kolkata, Rex Moser told PTI in an interview.