NEW DELHI, Jan 21: India and Pakistan do not want their military standoff to trigger a war, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister John Manley said on Monday after talks with leaders of the two countries.

“Both seem utterly sincere in their desire to avoid a fight,” Mr Manley told reporters here after an earlier Pakistan visit where he had met President Pervez Musharraf.

“There’s clear awareness on both sides the consequences would be great,” he said after talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

At the same time, he said mistakes could happen with huge armies and arsenals massed on both sides of the border.

“You don’t want that spark to turn into a conflagration,” said Mr Manley, who arrived on Sunday in India for a week-long trip to restore bilateral relations that were plunged into the deep-freeze following nuclear tests by India in 1998.

Mr Manley said Indian leaders had “made a point of saying how positively” they viewed Gen Musharraf’s landmark speech this month.

“They (Indian leaders) also went on to say they wanted to see action,” said Mr Manley, who was named deputy prime minister this month.

Despite the ending of sanctions against India and Pakistan over tit-for-tat nuclear tests staged by the two countries in 1998, Canada remained “deeply concerned” about nuclear proliferation in South Asia, Mr Manley added.

“We believe it introduces even more uncertainty and risk into a region that already has serious instability and tension.”

The Canadian deputy PM expressed hopes that military tensions between India and Pakistan would soon simmer down. “Each day that the conflict had not escalated” was a step forward, he told reporters following talks with Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh.

“Days and days have gone by without any further incident ... that is a positive development,” he added. “One would hope some action can happen both ways (which will result in) a gradual decline in tensions,” he said.—Reuters/AFP