January 4, 2003	Saturday	Shawwal 30, 1423

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WASHINGTON, Jan 3: The United States said on Thursday that it could not confirm reports that Pakistan was ready to use nuclear weapons against India during the border crisis last summer.

Several major US newspapers have reported earlier this week that Pakistan had threatened to use nuclear weapons in the summer when India brought hundreds of thousands of additional troops to the border following a terrorist attack on the parliament building in New Delhi.

They referred to a statement by President Musharraf that during the crisis he (the president) telephoned Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and told him that if the Indian troops crossed into Pakistan or Azad Kashmir, Islamabad would be forced to use ‘unconventional’ methods to fight back.

Later, army spokesman Gen Rashid Qureshi said Musharraf had referred to other unconventional means, such as a guerrilla war, and not the nuclear weapons.

When asked at a briefing here to comment on the report, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said he had no information about it.

When a reporter insisted that the report had already appeared in newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times, Boucher said: “Well, that doesn’t make it true.”

But he added that a year ago, the United States and its allies were all concerned about the prospect of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, but since then Washington had successfully defused tension in the region.

“We’ve been able, by working with them, not only to improve our relationship with India, our ties with Pakistan, but also, I think, to decrease the tension and to look at the prospect that the two countries can enter into a broad dialogue which includes questions of Kashmir,” he said.

Boucher said the United States would continue to be involved with both the nations because they were each important to Washington. “We think the situation in South Asia is one of the key situations in the world that we continue to work on.”

“Skip to the question instead of the charges,” said Boucher to an Indian reporter who suggested that Pakistan had provided nuclear assistance to both North Korea and Iraq, and five Pakistani nationals were being sought in the United States for their alleged involvement with a terrorist outfit.

After reading out some more charges against Pakistan, the reporter asked the State Department spokesman to review the US-Pakistan relations in 2002.

The United States and Pakistan had had a very important strategic cooperation in Afghanistan, a very important strategic cooperation against terrorism and, frankly, a very important cooperation in the direction that President Musharraf had set for his nation, Boucher said.

Commenting on a reported of clash between the US and Pakistani troops along the Afghan border earlier this week, the spokesman said both the United States and Pakistan were aware of the difficult situation along this border where terrorists operate between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These terrorists, he said, were a threat to Pakistan as well as to other nations, including the United States. “So we’ve been working very closely with Pakistan in the war against terrorism. That includes cooperation and coordination of our efforts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”

He said Pakistani authorities were investigating the incident that led to a clash between the troops of the two countries, but Washington had not received ‘any kind of protest’ from Islamabad.