As the potential for a nuclear war between the two sides began to abate last year, Powell said Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf had called him to find out whether India would respond positively if his Prime Minister made a telephone call to his Indian counterpart.

"And I'll never forget the day that President Musharraf, in one of our conversations, as the conversation was ending and the crisis had started to abate about then, said to me, "Do you think if my Prime Minister, the Pakistani Prime Minister, were to call the Indian Prime Minister, he would take the call?

"I said, 'I'll call you back in a little while.' And we set it up, the call was made. We also arranged for the call to be 'How are you?' 'Fine. How are you?' 'Fine.' -- just to begin this dialogue."

"And now the dialogue has paid off with the return of diplomatic relations, travel between the two countries, and the ministers are meeting and talking about the major outstanding issues that are still there between the two countries," Powell told the USA Today newspaper.

After receiving the important telephone call from his Pakistani counterpart, Mir Zaffarullah Khan Jamali, on April 28 last year, then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced the appointment of a high commissioner (ambassador) to Pakistan and moved to restore civil aviation links on a reciprocal basis.

Prior to that, deteriorating ties between India and Pakistan had cast a large shadow over South Asia. At several points the two nuclear powers looked to be on the point of open hostilities.

India continued a huge build-up of troops along the border after blaming Pakistan for an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. Pakistan responded and for months more than one million troops were stationed in combat positions.

"And many people were telling me all week long, there's going to be a war this weekend and it might go nuclear," Powell recalled. "It didn't happen, and it didn't happen because a lot of people worked on it over an extended period of time; the United States, United Kingdom, China.

"A lot of my colleagues and I spent an enormous amount of time on this and found a way to stop that mobilization or at least freeze it until we could get it moving in the other direction," he said.

On bilateral relations with India and Pakistan, Powell said the United States saw each country as separate and distinct, "and because we treat each other as a single bilateral partner with us, it gives us more standing to encourage them to do things together.

"I think you have to keep engaged with these nations and with the personalities in these nations. And you also have to keep some perspective about where they were and where they are now and where they may be where you hope they are heading in the future."

Powell suggested that Musharraf must be give more time to implement democratic reforms as he had to carefully steer his country out of a host of problems.

"And so a little bit of understanding is necessary as you watch somebody like President Musharraf go through this process," he added.

Pakistan's parliament adopted a law last week prolonging Musharraf's dual role as president and army chief even though the general, who seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, had pledged to shed his uniform by December

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