US in touch with Pakistan, India

WASHINGTON: The US State Department said Washington was in touch with both India and Pakistan while urging them to work towards what it called a “responsible solution” as tensions have risen between the two Asian nations following a recent Islamist militant attack in Kashmir.

In public, the US government has expressed support for India after the attack but has not criticized Pakistan. India blamed Pakistan for the April 22 attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed over two dozen people. Pakistan denies responsibility and called for a neutral probe.

“This is an evolving situation and we are monitoring developments closely. We have been in touch with the governments of India and Pakistan at multiple levels,” a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement.

“The United States encourages all parties to work together towards a responsible resolution,” the spokesperson added.

The State Department spokesperson also said Washington “stands with India and strongly condemns the terrorist attack in Pahalgam,” reiterating comments similar to recent ones made by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

India is an increasingly important US partner as Washington aims to counter China’s rising influence in Asia while Pakistan remains a U.S. ally even as its importance for Washington has diminished after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan.

Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based South Asia analyst and writer for the Foreign Policy magazine, said India is now a much closer US partner than Pakistan.

“This may worry Islamabad that if India retaliates militarily, the U.S. may sympathize with its counter-terrorism imperatives and not try to stand in the way,” Kugelman told Reuters.

Kugelman also said that given Washington’s involvement and ongoing diplomatic efforts in Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza, the Trump administration is “dealing with a lot on its global plate” and may leave India and Pakistan on their own, at least in the early days of the tensions.

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Hussain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the U.S. and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, also said that there seemed to be no U.S. appetite to calm the situation at this moment.

“India has a longstanding grievance about terrorism emanating or supported from across border. Pakistan has a longstanding belief that India wants to dismember it. Both work themselves into a frenzy every few years. This time there is no U.S. interest in calming things down,” Haqqani said.