ISLAMABAD, July 30: Pakistan hit back on Tuesday at India’s accusation that President Pervez Musharraf was guilty of “terminological inexactitude” with a carefully worded insult of its own.

India’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao made the remark in response to Gen Musharraf’s insistence, before talks on Sunday with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, that militants had ceased crossing into occupied Kashmir from Azad Kashmir.

Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan retorted by declaring “she is suffering from terminological ineptitude.”

Powell was back in the region at the weekend to keep up the pressure on both the countries to scale down their-seven month military standoff over Kashmir.

He pronounced tensions were down and the likelihood of war had subsided since late May, telling reporters as he flew from Islamabad to Bangkok “it was not as though we were on the eve of war.”—AFP