NEW DELHI, Jan 22: US President George W. Bush is keen to visit South Asia but tensions between India and Pakistan have stalled the plan, US Ambassador in New Delhi Robert Blackwill said in Washington on Tuesday, according to Indian news reports on Wednesday.

The remarks coincided with a flaming row between the two countries over diplomatic harassment and also comments by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee ostensibly ridiculing President Pervez Musharraf for holding recent elections in his country.

“He (Bush) is extremely interested in India,” Blackwill was quoted as telling a meeting with Indian businessmen. “Of course the visit has been complicated by the crisis between India and Pakistan especially, but he wants to come.”

Avoiding any time for the proposed visit, Blackwill said: “This is a subject every time I see him he raises with me....The sooner he comes the better....We will have to see when that (the visit) is going to be.”

Blackwill’s optimism over any American presidential visit, no matter how remote and overreaching, was quickly neutralized by Vajpayee’s withering remarks clearly aimed at Pakistan and its president.

Vajpayee told an international parliamentarians’ meeting in New Delhi, from where Islamabad was significantly kept out, that even rulers in khaki felt the need to seek some kind of democratic legitimacy.

“Coups, bloody power struggles and military take-overs have come to be seen as anathema to the ethos of our times. Even rulers in khaki have felt the need to seek some kind of democratic legitimacy,” he told the inaugural function of the three-day International Parliamentary Conference here to mark the Golden Jubilee of Indian Parliament.

According to a separate report from Washington quoting Blackwill, the US envoy said his country had no plans to act as mediator to resolve tensions between India and Pakistan and has asked both the South Asian nations to “discuss their differences directly.”

Pointing out that US had vital interest in good relations with both India and Pakistan, Blackwill said: “We are urging the government of India and government of Pakistan to discuss their differences directly.

“We will not become a mediator. We have no blueprints to solve the differences between the two. You will not see any administration officials getting of an aeroplane in either Delhi or Islamabad with a map case under their arm and saying how they can fix their differences,” Blackwill said while addressing a meeting at the US Chamber of Commerce organized by the Indian Forum for Political Education and the India Business Council in Washington on Tuesday night.

Admitting that maintaining good relations with Pakistan and India did present a “diplomatic challenge of some complexity,” he, nonetheless, said that the Bush administration did not want to determine India-US relations “through the optic of India’s relations with Pakistan.”

The US has a good array of issues relating to the new Indo-US bilateral relationship and multilateral affairs that have nothing to do with Pakistan. But tensions between India and its western neighbour do “concern” the US as it had large stakes in the region which would be affected by that, Blackwill said.—Jay Enn