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US should pay more attention to Indo-Pak tensions, says panel

WASHINGTON, Friday (AFP) The United States needs to pay more high-level attention to simmering rivalries between India and Pakistan or face the prospect of crises in the region that could present a major threat to US interests, a report said.

The report, co-sponsored by the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society, warns the administration of President George W. Bush that India and Pakistan must be seen as foreign policy priorities as "dark shadows" have descended across South Asia.

It also highlights that reconstruction in Afghanistan has stalled, partly due to the worsening security situation outside Kabul.

"Given the dangers inherent in festering India-Pakistan rivalry, the United States should become more active in trying to help the two nuclear-armed enemies manage their differences," the report recommends.

"Their hostility, and its most neuralgic point, the dispute over Kashmir, remains the gravest threat to regional peace and US interests," it warned.

Underlining Pakistan's instability amid "entrenched Islamist extremisim," the report urged the US Congress to speed a proposed three billion dollar economic and security aid package requested by the White House to Pakistan.

However, it said two-thirds of the money should go into economic and social programs instead of the fifty percent envisaged by the Bush administration.

With respect to India, the report said Washington should deepen its security, intelligence and trade contacts with Delhi.

It also urged the United States to help kick-start a bilateral process toward working out a comprehensive cease-fire along the Kashmir Line of Control, "the most likely flashpoint of wider conflict."

Turning to Afghanistan, which borders northern Pakistan, the report's authors - who included Frank Wisner and Nicholas Platt, the former US ambassadors to India and Pakistan respectively, said renewed conflict along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan had stalled reconstruction.

It urged an "accelerated training for the new Afghan National Army and police force" among other recommendations.

"Securing a moderate Muslim state in Pakistan, consolidating and deepening increasingly important US-India ties, actively encouraging peaceful relations between India and Pakistan, and ensuring an Afghanistan where terrorists can never again find shelter must be priority policy goals for the United States," it said.

"Even though Pakistan offers valuable help in rooting out al-Qaeda remnants, it has failed to prevent Islamist terrorists from using its territory as a base for armed attacks on Kashmir and Afghanistan," the authors added.

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