State Department urges U.S. citizens to get out of India

By Barry Schweid

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The State Department on Friday urged the 60,000 Americans in India, including hundreds of U.S. diplomats and their families, to leave the country because of the risk of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan.

“The fact that both of these countries possess nuclear weapons is part of our thinking,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Still, the department stopped short of ordering nonessential U.S. diplomats and their families to leave. “At this point, this is voluntary,” Boucher said.

“Tensions have risen to serious levels and the risk of intensified military hostilities between India and Pakistan cannot be ruled out,” the department said in a travel warning.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said officials are concerned “that the Indians might find they have to attack.”

“I don’t know what their timeline is,” he told the BBC. Powell said he had no immediate plans to go to the region, “but it’s always a possibility.”

A small group of military personnel from the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii is going to New Delhi to review the U.S. Embassy’s evacuation plan, a senior U.S. military official said Friday on condition of anonymity.

There are about 600 U.S. diplomatic workers and dependents in India, Boucher said. Those considered essential were not advised to leave.

Boucher said he did not know how many of those diplomats – in the New Delhi embassy and consulates in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras – or the 60,000 private U.S. citizens would choose to remain.

Americans who decide to stay should avoid all border areas between the two countries, the department said. Those who decide to leave will use commercial flights, which are plentiful, Boucher said.

Lalit Mansingh, India’s ambassador to Washington, D.C., said the U.S. action was unnecessary.

“I don’t think the situation justifies asking Americans to leave India,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in Raleigh, N.C.

Mansingh also said India was willing to have a dialogue with Pakistan, but not under a threat of Islamic extremism. “It can’t be with a gun pointed to our head,” he said. “First and foremost, terrorism must come to an end.”

In Pakistan, all nonessential U.S. Embassy staff and dependents were ordered home March 22, five days after an Islamabad church was bombed, killing four people including two Americans. Private U.S. citizens, numbering up to 10,000, were told of the ordered departure to encourage them to leave.

Dozens of U.S. Embassy staff remain in Pakistan. The embassy in Islamabad is open, as are consulates in Karachi, Peshawar and Lahore, although they are heavily fortified.

While Boucher stressed the potential for conflict, he also said Pakistani authorities apparently had issued instructions to halt the influx of militants into Kashmir, the territory claimed by Pakistan and India and the cause of a half-century of tension.

“We are still looking for confirmation of results on the ground,” Boucher said.

India and the United States have sought to curb the infusion of Islamic extremists into Kashmir.

On Thursday, President Bush demanded that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf “live up to his word” and crack down on extremists.

The State Department’s travel warning said “conditions along India’s border with Pakistan and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir have deteriorated.” It cited artillery exchanges between Indian and Pakistani troops and said terrorist groups linked to the al-Qaida network and implicated in attacks on Americans have attacked and killed civilians.

“Anytime you have tension between two countries that possess nuclear weapons, it is a serious situation, and that is all the more reason why high-level diplomacy is ongoing with India and Pakistan,” said a White House spokesman, Scott McClellan.

In parallel moves, Britain and Canada also advised their citizens to consider leaving India.

The families of British government staff, and officials holding nonessential government positions in New Delhi and Bombay, will be allowed to return home, said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. His office estimates there are about 150 government staff in India, with 200 dependents.

In Ottawa, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said nonessential diplomatic workers and families of Canada’s diplomatic staff in India had been told to depart.

In Singapore, after meeting with Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said a war between India and Pakistan would be “somewhere between terrible and catastrophic.”

Fernandes, meanwhile, said there was no change along the border between India and Pakistan. “The situation is stable,” he told The Associated Press.

On the diplomatic front, the Bush administration is encouraging India and Pakistan to discuss Kashmir and other issues directly with each other.

Powell talked by telephone Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to meet next week with senior Indian and Pakistani officials at a conference in Kazakstan.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage plans talks in Pakistan next Thursday and in India next Friday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld intends to speak with leaders of both countries a few days later.

Boucher said they would stress to both sides “that the consequences of even contemplating nuclear war can be disastrous.”