President Jiang Zemin Tuesday urged India and Pakistan to
peacefully settle their disputes through negotiation and dialogue
as tensions centered on the disputed Kashmir region continued.
Jiang Tuesday held separate meetings with Pakistani President
Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on
the sidelines of the first summit of the Conference
on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia.
China and its two South Asian neighbors are all members of the
16-member multilateral forum for Asian peace and security.
Speaking of the current dispute between India and Pakistan, Jiang
told Musharraf and Vajpayee separately that it was a question left
over by history and that China sincerely hoped the two sides would
settle the problem peacefully.
The two countries have traded heavy fire across a ceasefire line in
disputed Kashmir, with the situation threatening to erupt into
war.
Musharraf told Jiang that Pakistan hopes for peace and opposes war,
according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Pakistan will never initiate war and hopes to negotiate with India,
the spokesman quoted Musharraf as saying.
The disputed Kashmir region sparked two of the three wars between
India and Pakistan, both of which claim the region in its
entirety.
Jiang told Musharraf that China supports Pakistan's attempts at
restraint and its great efforts to ease the tension. Jiang said
this was in the interests of India and Pakistan, as well as of
South Asia as a whole.
Both Musharraf and Vajpayee expressed their willingness to develop
stable and mutually beneficial relations with China.
Tuesday morning, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan met his
Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov. They agreed that peace and
stability in South Asia are in the interests of both China and
Russia, which share the same stand on related issues.
The two foreign ministers agreed to continue their efforts to
reduce the current tension in South Asia.
In
anther development, Chinese Vice-Premier Qian Qichen, who is
accompanying Jiang at the summit, met Israeli Deputy Prime Minister
Natan Sharansky.
Qian urged all parties involved in the Middle East conflict to
cooperate with the mediation efforts of the international community
and take effective measures to ease the tension between Israel and
Palestine.
(China
Daily June 5, 2002)