US ties with Pakistan, India helping peace moves: Powell

WASHINGTON: The United States has been able to forge good ties with both Pakistan and India, enabling it to “help them as they reach out to one another”, US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said.

In an interview with Hubert Wetzel and Guy Dinmore of the Financial Times, Secretary Powell said American alliances in Asia “are strong”. India and Pakistan, he said, are now pursuing peace, and added: “They’re even starting to deal with the difficult issue of Kashmir.”

He said: “We’ve succeeded in creating a relationship with India and Pakistan that each one of those stand on their own, good US-India and good US-Pakistan relationships.”

Mr Powell said this was “quite an improvement from where we were two years ago when they were on the verge of war that some people were writing could go nuclear within a few days”.

“That’s not the case now,” he said. “Now, they’re having soccer (sic) matches and the buses are going back and forth. They’re even starting to deal with the difficult issues of Kashmir.”

Bush to give migration priority: US Secretary of State Colin Powell, on a visit to Mexico, said on Tuesday that immigration reform would be a priority in the second term of US President George Bush.

“The US is proud to be a nation of immigrants. But too many of those immigrants living and working in our country have no legal status,” said Powell, himself the son of Jamaican immigrants to the US.

Bush “remains committed to a comprehensive migration reform as a high priority in the second term and he will work closely with our Congress to achieve this goal”, Powell stressed.

The top US diplomat noted that Bush has “proposed a temporary-worker programme to match willing foreign workers with US employers and to offer legal status to immigrants who contribute to our economy as they work to support their families”. “Together, we can work together to make North America more globally competitive. How best do we do that? By working cooperatively to improve education so that our citizens can be successful in a 21st century world. By improving infrastructure on both sides of the border to meet the needs of the people and commerce. By making it easier to start new businesses in both our countries,” Powell said. agencies

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