Straw hints at deal to avert war in Kashmir

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After hectic rounds of top-level meetings in Islamabad and Delhi, Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, said last night that the looming conflict between India and Pakistan was dangerous but he added that "war is not inevitable".

In contrast to his gloomy speculations before the trip regarding the likely consequences of a South Asian war, he hinted yesterday that a deal was in the offing. "There is material in the meetings today and yesterday in Islamabad which is worthy of further consideration," he said.

In both Islamabad and Delhi, the Foreign Secretary went out of his way to say exactly what India wanted to hear; that the dispute was purely a bilateral one, that Pakistan had infiltrated terrorists into Indian-controlled Kashmir, and that Pakistan must now ensure that "cross-border terrorism" – the preferred Indian term – ceases, in conformity with United Nations Security Council resolution 1373.

He made clear that, in the terms of that resolution, "freedom fighters" such as those espousing Kashmir's liberation from Indian rule were terrorists plain and simple.

These were the diplomatic gifts that Mr Straw came bearing to India. In a tantalisingly suggestive phrase, he also said that the international community would be able to help Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism through what he called "precise assistance".

It is also likely that he extracted new assurances regarding the control of terrorism from the Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf – and that he subsequently extracted from the Indian side a promise that if Pakistan's assurances were translated into new realities on the ground, India in turn would take certain steps in the direction of de-escalation.

The Foreign Secretary said that on the aeroplane home to London he would be conveying the results of his discussions to the Tony Blair, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, the EU commissioner Chris Patten and other senior figures – suggesting he would have something substantive to communicate to them, if not yet to the world at large. "It remains to be seen what emerges from the meetings over the forthcoming period," he said yesterday. Next week, the American Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, will also fly to Islamabad and Delhi, with the clear hope of taking the process further.

In Pakistan, meanwhile, General Musharraf continued to make the sort of menacing noises with which he punctuated his televised address on Sunday. In a speech yesterday, the President said: "If war is thrust on us, it will be fought in the enemy's territory."

But in a revealing comment, a spokesman for Jaish-e-Mohammed, one of the most prominent groups of Islamic radicals fighting in Kashmir, told a news agency in Pakistan: "We have been stabbed in the back and abandoned by Pakistan in the same way in which it had disassociated itself from the Taliban."

Across the Indo-Pakistan border, meanwhile, a million soldiers continued to confront each other, and up and down the Line of Control between the two parts of Kashmir innocent civilians continued to die in a low-level artillery and mortar war that is escalating. In the past few days, there have been artillery exchanges in Kargil and Siachen, the Line of Control front in the high Himalayas.

Yesterday India reported six civilians killed in Dras, a border village in the Kargil district that was evacuated during the Kargil mountain war three years ago. Five more were killed in the town of Poonch, north of the city of Jammu, spreading panic in the town. Pakistan claimed that five civilians had been killed by Indian shells in Sialkot.