Rumsfeld Next in Line to Attempt to Ease Tensions in South Asia

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took the handoff Saturday from Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of State, as America’s relay diplomacy to end the crisis between India and Pakistan appeared to be yielding its first results.

Rumsfeld is due in South Asia within the next few days for the latest phase of talks aimed at cooling tensions between the two nuclear rivals. He lingered more than a day in Estonia to hear the impressions of Armitage--who had stopped on his way home from the region to confer with Rumsfeld.

Officially, Rumsfeld was in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, to take part in talks with Baltic and Nordic defense ministers. But it turned into a convenient way station to pick up the latest information from Armitage on progress in the U.S. effort to lower the danger of war between India and Pakistan in their dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Armitage sounded slightly upbeat about the situation as he arrived in Tallinn on Saturday. He said that India was considering returning some of its recalled diplomats to Pakistan soon and that it might also make unspecified “military gestures” to assuage fears of a war breaking out.

“I think you couldn’t say the crisis is over, but I think you could say the tensions are down measurably,” Armitage said in Tallinn, according to the Associated Press.

Armitage had met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, on Thursday and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in New Delhi on Friday. The time of Rumsfeld’s arrival in South Asia hasn’t been specified. He is scheduled to leave Tallinn today but plans to stop over in the Middle East to confer with U.S. allies there.

Rumsfeld refused to comment on the India-Pakistan situation, deferring to Armitage: “Whatever he says, I agree with.”

India and Pakistan have come under intense diplomatic pressure to step back from the precipice of war. In addition to Rumsfeld and Armitage, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin tried to play peacemaker when they met with the Indian and Pakistani leaders in Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

Vajpayee has demanded that Pakistan end its support to militants in that country who he says are responsible for cross-border infiltrations and attacks in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir and in India itself.

Musharraf, however, insists that Pakistan doesn’t support terrorist groups and has been doing everything in its power to prevent attacks.

Rumsfeld’s stop in Estonia was considered a strong hint that the three Baltic states--Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania--would be at the head of the list when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meets in November and decides on which countries to invite next to join the alliance.

“The latest opinion is that the enlargement should include a large number of countries,” Rumsfeld told reporters.