WASHINGTON, Jan 15: The United States wants to see a situation where the Indian Army is no longer mobilized and moves back to its original positions, according to US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Appearing on the CNN on Monday afternoon, hours before leaving on a visit to South Asia, Mr Powell said the US wished to find a solution to the present crisis in the subcontinent that would allow Pakistan to move its focus away from the border and lead to a lowering of tensions to lessen the opportunity for some incident to spark a conflict between India and Pakistan.

In an indication that the US believes that Pakistan has taken adequate steps to de-escalate the crisis with India, Mr Powell referred to Gen Pervez Musharraf’s weekend speech, and said the general and done “more than just speak. He is taking action. He has banned terrorist organizations, he is arresting people, and the Indians have taken note of all of this.”

The secretary added: “We have stabilized things right now to the point where we can continue working the diplomatic and political track and persuade everyone that this is the direction (in which) we should continue to move, and the last thing we want to see happen right now in South Asia is a war between these two nuclear-armed states.”

Mr Powell’s exact words on Indian troop withdrawals were: “We want to see us get back to a situation where the Indian army is no longer mobilized, they move back to their original positions. We want to find a solution which allows Pakistan to move its forces away from the border so that we have less tension...”

The secretary described Gen Musharraf’s speech as “very important” in that it showed “an Islamic leader saying Jihad should be for the purpose of educating people and for the purpose of lifting people out poverty.”

A similar point was made by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher at his press briefing on Monday afternoon (partly reported in Dawn on Tuesday). Mr Boucher said the Musharraf speech was “important not only for its promise to remove violence from the Kashmir confrontation with India, but also for its implied call for Pakistan’s social transformation”.

This is also the theme of somewhat belated editorial comments in The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Times called Gen Musharraf’s crackdown on militant groups as a “momentous development” and said his policies since Sept 11 “amount to a striking redefinition of Pakistani identity”.

The paper said India owed Pakistan a positive response, and urged Secretary Powell to try to coax India into making some reciprocal gesture to Pakistan, “perhaps by pulling back some of its troops on the border”.

The Post said Gen Musharraf’s speech contained a breakthrough of potentially deeper consequence over time, but, unable to resist the temptation of taking a swipe at the Palestinian movement, it said the speech “would not only reverse Pakistan’s drift in recent years of tolerance of Islamic militancy but would also provide an alternative vision to that of governments who arrest militants but ignore or even support their ideology.”

The Post said as the war against terrorism shifts and deepens following the first phase of Afghanistan, Gen Musharraf “has taken the lead on what may be its most important front”.