U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, left, with former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh at a joint press conference after a meeting between the two leaders on Jan. 17, 2002. (File photo)

WASHINGTON: The State Department defended Secretary of State Colin Powell’s account in an interview of behind-the-scene-efforts made by Washington to nudge India and Pakistan toward a dialogue for settling major differences hampering the relationship between the two South Asian neighbors.

“I don’t know exactly what he said. I guess I sort of heard about these remarks. Just say the Secretary has always — I think he several times sort of described the efforts that he made to try to support the Indian and Pakistani government as they made efforts to work together, that this has been a matter that we have long supported with our policy. We have praised the statesmanlike initiatives that have been taken by the Indian and Pakistani leaders and we’ve tried to support them at every juncture in a variety of ways, including keeping in touch with them,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at his daily press briefing here.

“The Secretary has kept in close touch with his colleagues on the telephone. We’ve stayed in close touch and always supported them, always recognized the role that Indians and Pakistanis themselves deserve for the remarkable progress that they’ve made in taking this situation from one of confrontation to prospects of resolving many of these issues peacefully. That has a lot to do with their statesmanship. And we’ve tried to help along the way and are proud of what we’ve done to try to help,” he added.

Powell’s remarks on the role he played behind the scenes were made in an interview given last month to USA Today. Former Indian external affairs minister Jaswant Singh had contested the Secretary of State’s version of events at a press conference in New Delhi, which was reported by The Washington Post.

Replying to questions at a briefing about Singh’s reaction to Powell’s account, Boucher said: “Indian and Pakistani officials deserve praise for their “statesmanlike initiatives. But the story as told by the secretary is the true story. But I’m not sure what version of it or — others might have been commenting on.”

Powell, in an interview to USA Today, had enumerated the Bush administration’s foreign policy achievements, including efforts to ward off a war between India and Pakistan who had amassed troops on their side of the Line of Control in 2002. He also said that it was on his suggestion that then Pakistan prime minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali telephoned his Indian counterpart Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Referring to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, he said: “I’ll never forget the day that President Musharraf, in one of our conversations . . . 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.”

Powell added that “we also arranged for the call to be a ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine’ type of call.”

The Secretary of State also said that in 2002, India and Pakistan had seemed on the verge of nuclear war, and “now the dialogue has paid off” with diplomatic relations, easy travel between the two countries and official talks to resolve differences on a range of issues. “I think that’s been a success of the administration,” he said.