Bush sends in Rumsfeld to prevent war over Kashmir

President George Bush announced yesterday he was sending his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to India and Pakistan to lead the diplomatic drive to avert war over Kashmir.

Mr Bush's move is the latest in an increasingly desperate international effort to tackle a crisis which threatens not only to derail the campaign against al-Qa'ida but which could lead to nuclear war.

Pakistan said it was considering moving troops from the border with Afghanistan, where they have been working with US-led anti-terror operations, to its eastern frontier with India.

Mr Bush said the onus was on Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, to "live up to his word" and stop raids by Islamic militants across the line of control. War would serve the interests of neither India or Pakistan, he said. For the US, too, he might have acknowledged, war would be a disaster. Admiral Michael Boyce, the British Chief of Defence Staff, admitted during a visit to Bagram air base that the crisis was hitting allied operations on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A war would not only underscore Washington's inability to root out al-Qa'ida and Afghan-trained fighters – who it believes may be fomenting the Kashmir raids in the hope of undermining General Musharraf's regime – it would also endanger the 1,100 US troops in the subcontinent as well as between 50,000 and 60,000 Americans there. Mr Rumsfeld and the Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, were "analysing what it would take to save American lives if needs be", Mr Bush said. Mr Rumsfeld and Pentagon planners must assess India's warning that it will not be deterred from a military strike by the presence of US troops across the border.

The open discussion of such precautions, and of a possible war and its consequences, are a sign of US anxiety and the fear that even US and allied diplomatic influence may not be enough. Despite the mildly encouraging words of Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, after his talks in Islamabad and Delhi, US officials warn that "irresponsible elements" could force the hands of both governments and cause the crisis to spin out of control.