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CNN Live At Daybreak

India Rules Out Possibility of Immediate Meeting With Musharraf

Aired June 03, 2002 - 06:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to focus now on our top story, the simmering confrontation between India and Pakistan that global leaders fear might explode into a nuclear war. The leaders of India and Pakistan are at a regional summit in Kazakhstan, but they are snubbing each other.

Our Matthew Chance is at the summit in Almaty. He joins us live with the latest -- good morning.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you as well, Carol. You are absolutely right. The leaders of both India and Pakistan are here in Kazakhstan in the city of Almaty attending a summit of Asian regional interests, 16 nations attending this.

According to the Indian delegation though, despite the international diplomatic pressure that's being placed on India and Pakistan to get together to try and, if not sort out the dispute over Kashmir -- that would be too ambitious -- at least to get together and convince the international community that they can control their relations that have been simmering and indeed boiling out of control over recent months and recent weeks.

Indian officials though say there are no plans at this stage. In fact, they are ruling out any possibility at this stage of face-to- face, ice breaking meetings with the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf. They have long said that they wanted Pakistan, first of all, to stamp out what they call cross-border terrorism, the flight of militants, the movement of Kashmiri militants they say are backed by Pakistan across the line of control into Indian-administered Kashmir.

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, has said that he is prepared to talk and is blaming India for not being prepared to do the same.

Still though, there is a lot of disappointment, not just here at the summit, but also around the world that the results of this summit have not yet yielded any kind of face-to-face contact between the two sides.

There is still -- let me just say briefly though, Carol -- still some hope. There are a number of bilateral meetings, meetings between countries and India and Pakistan in which countries are expected to communicate their concerns about the crisis, and encourage both India and Pakistan to get together and to sit across from each other on the table.

Foremost amongst those countries, Russia, Vladimir Putin, the president, who will be leading the Russian delegation, has already said that he intends to get the two countries together. We'll just have to wait and see whether he manages to take advantage of this window of opportunity -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Well, Matthew, the Russians have had some success before in bringing the two sides together a long time ago when Russia was the Soviet Union.

CHANCE: That's right. I mean, Russia has a long history of very close relations with India. They are very major trading partners. They are the biggest supplier of weapons to India. And as you point out, they have had a precedence of intervening and brokering some kind of peace deal or rather, you know, some kind of settlement between the Indians and the Pakistanis over Kashmir.

Back in 1966, in another central Asian republic of Uzbekistan in Tashkent there, they managed to normalize relations between India and Pakistan after they had fought a brief war over Kashmir in 1965. The hope is they will be able to do the same. But this summit ends on Wednesday, and at the moment, there are no indications that India and Pakistan are prepared to sit down and get to grips with the issues that confront them -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Matthew Chance reporting live for us this morning -- thank you.

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