February 16, 2003	Sunday	Zul Hijjah 14, 1423

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WASHINGTON, Feb 15: The White House has said that the United States will stay engaged in South Asia to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan.

“President Bush is going to continue at it, along with many other nations that have played very helpful roles, including Russia and England, in reducing tensions between India and Pakistan,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

He said that “constant and ongoing diplomacy” had caused tensions between the two rival neighbours to decrease “after a considerably long period of time, dating back many years, decades.”

Mr Fleischer, however, admitted that despite this “constant engagement” tensions between India and Pakistan “tend to flare up.”

“They tend to have their seasons where they flare up and they come back down again,” he added.

But the White House spokesman said that the Bush administration felt that the situation had been less tense in recent times.

And that’s why, he said, “this is going to be a long-term project for this president, for this government” and its allies who would stay engaged in bringing peace to this region.

Mr Fleischer was responding to a question submitted earlier by an Indian journalist who had asked what the Bush administration planned to do to stop infiltrations across the Line of Control in Kashmir.