Straw backs Indo-Pakistan peace efforts

British foreign secretary Jack Straw voiced support for Pakistan and India’s peace dialogue today, saying the nuclear-armed neighbours could not resolve their dispute over Kashmir through bloodshed.

Over the past year, tensions have eased markedly between Pakistan and India, but they have made little headway in settling their competing territorial claims to the Himalayan region.

“The only way out to resolve the Kashmir dispute is a peaceful way. I know that when you have peace process like this, there can be frustration, there could be many setbacks, but the other way is war, which will never serve the purpose,” he said during a visit to Gujrat in east Pakistan.

“Our task is to give support and ask India and Pakistan to resolve it peacefully.”

India’s foreign minister, Natwar Singh, is due to hold talks with Pakistani leaders in the capital Islamabad tomorrow, amid expectations the two sides may agree to start a bus service linking the Indian and Pakistani-held portions of Kashmir.

Mr Straw made his comments to a gathering of politicians, intellectuals and social workers at a local government office in Gujrat, then visited an Islamic school where authorities arrested a top terror suspect seven months ago.

In July, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian al-Qaida suspect on the FBI list of most-wanted terrorists for his alleged role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in east Africa that killed more than 200 people, was arrested in a police raid at a house in Gujrat.

He was later handed over to the United States.