WASHINGTON, Dec 24: Senior US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, believe that the risk of India and Pakistan going to war over the Mumbai terror attacks has abated.

“They have tried to have good relations with one another, and I think they want to preserve that,” said Ms Rice in a recent interview while explaining why she thought the two nuclear neighbours would not fight yet another war.

She was supported by Chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen who said he believed leaders in both India and Pakistan wanted to avoid a war.

Such a war, he said, did not suit the United either as it would “force the Pakistani leadership to lose interest in the west (the Afghan border),” and bring India and Pakistan closer to a nuclear flashpoint.

Both Secretary Rice and Admiral Mullen, however, underlined the need for Pakistan to bring to justice those responsible for the Mumbai attacks, with Ms Rice insisting that now was the time to act.

“They are really going to have to take on this issue of terrorism and extremism. They now know it will consume them if they don’t,” she warned.

The two statements clearly define the US attitude towards India-Pakistan tensions and the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan. The Americans do not see the two as separate issues. They fear that any increase in tensions on the eastern border will revive the old India-Pakistan rivalry, causing Islamabad to withdraw its forces from the Afghan border and refocus its attention on India. And this is what the Americans want to avoid.

Secretary Rice indicated in one of her recent interview, the real problem in South Asia is the “coming together of the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan with the difficult-to-defend Afghan border.”