Rumsfeld visits India to press for conciliation

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, arrived in Delhi late last night to maintain the international pressure on India and Pakistan to step back from the brink of war.

Earlier in the day the Indian Navy said its warships sent to waters off Pakistan in the Arabian Sea were to return to their bases in the Bay of Bengal. The ships included India's only aircraft carrier, INS Viraat. But the nuclear-armed neighbours continued to bicker about the value of the conciliatory steps India has taken so far.

The recall of the warships followed India's announcement on Monday that it was lifting the six-month ban on Pakistani commercial aircraft flying over its territory.

At a press conference in Abu Dhabi, Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, complained that the lifting of the ban on the use of Indian air space was "a very small beginning.

"We are looking for genuine steps, not cosmetic or peripheral. The real response that we are looking for is initiation of a dialogue ... on the core Kashmir dispute and all other issues which bedevil relations between India and Pakistan," he said.

But Nirupama Rao, a spokeswoman for the Indian Foreign Ministry, said the gestures were "important steps, significant steps. The Pakistani government should recognise the import of these moves and the fact that they are substantial gestures."

The rest of the world will above all be relieved that the two rivals have stopped threatening each other with nuclear Armageddon.

India's first conciliatory gestures after a campaign of diplomatic and military pressure lasting six months came after Richard Armitage, America's deputy secretary of state, persuaded India that General Musharraf was serious about ending infiltration into Indian Kashmir.

Blunt threats from the US diplomat appear to have done the trick. On Monday one American reporter asked Mr Armitage if he had warned General Musharraf that the US might move its bases from Pakistan to India if the Pakistani army and military intelligence support for Islamic radicals in Kashmir did not stop. Mr Armitage did not bother to deny it. "I had a straightforward and frank discussion with President Musharraf," he said.

"We didn't ... waste much time with small talk." Mr Rumsfeld is expected to have equally blunt exchanges with the Indian leadership today, reflecting complaints that Indian conciliation so far has been niggardly.

In Kashmir, meanwhile, schools and businesses remained closed yesterday in protest at the arrest on Sunday of the Kashmiri separatist politician Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the head of the Islamist Jamaat-i-Islami party in the state.