US helped India, Pakistan avoid war: Powell

The avoidance of war between India and Pakistan was a 'major achievement' of the United States and the international community, Secretary of State Colin Powell has said.

"We kept foreign ministers stacked over Islamabad and New Delhi a thousand feet apart for six months to constantly talk to both sides and defuse that crisis," he said in an interview to the National Journal.

"And it was the positive relationship I had formed with the Russians and the Chinese over the spy and EP-3 incidents that allowed me to go to them and say, 'Hey guys, here's what we have to do to keep the Indians and Pakistanis from going after each other.'

"And we all agreed. Nobody was playing superpower or Cold War politics with that one," he said.

At the time, everybody feared that a war, which could go nuclear, was going to break out between India and Pakistan.

Powell said, "I personally never thought that because I had been talking to both sides almost every day. I was quite confident a solution would be found. But solutions don't happen overnight. You've got to work them."

Powell recalled how President Pervez Musharraf agreed to support the US over the war against the Al Qaeda and Taliban, which the Pakistanis had created.

"My deputy [Richard Armitage] talked to their intelligence guy when he visited Washington right after 9/11, and told him, 'Hey, you guys have got to knock it off and join this war,'" Powell said.

The Pakistani intelligence official took the message back to Musharraf.

"Then I called Musharraf the next day and said, 'Mr President, you are with us or not, but we've got to have a clean answer.' And he said, 'I'm with you, and I'll do all of those things that you have asked.' So, yes, I think that was a milestone."