WASHINGTON, Oct 18: The United States has called for exercising restraint, saying dialogue was the best way to solve the Kashmir dispute.

The call was made by a senior State Department official on Wednesday when he was asked to comment on the latest incident of tension between Pakistan and India, with Islamabad charging that India had made threatening military moves that had forced Pakistan to put its troops on alert on its borders with India.

The temperature along the Line of Control began to rise on Monday, coinciding with US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to the area, when Indian troops were alleged to have fired across the border at Pakistani outposts.

President George Bush immediately asked India and Pakistan to “stand down” and not do anything that would distract attention from the campaign in Afghanistan.

Secretary Powell was questioned in New Delhi on his statement made in Pakistan that he considered Kashmir to be a central issue between India and Pakistan. Mr Powell said he had not said Kashmir was “central issue”, as implied in the questions put to him, but was “central” in the sense that it was an important issue, and “to suggest it isn’t wouldn’t have been correct.” But the really important thing was to move forward on the basis of dialogue, on the basis of efforts to reduce tensions, to avoid violence and with respect to human rights.

Earlier on Wednesday, leading Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman urged the United States to appoint a special representative for South Asia who could at least keep lines of communication between Pakistan and India open.

He said in a CNN inter-view the Afghan crisis had provided an opportunity to resolving disputes between the countries.

The senator, who ran for vice-president on the Al Gore ticket during the last presidential elections, said there was a tendency in the Bush administration to withdraw from regional conflicts, but there were now signs that the administration was prepared to engage itself in the India-Pakistan and the Israel-Palestine disputes.