ABU DHABI, June 9: President Pervez Musharraf is to visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday for talks on the crisis with neighbouring India, the official WAM news agency said on Sunday.

Musharraf will hold talks with UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, whose country has expressed its readiness to play the role of mediator between Islamabad and New Delhi, WAM said.

Musharraf will travel on to the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Tuesday to meet Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, a spokesman at the Pakistan Embassy in Riyadh told AFP.

The spokesman said Musharraf will leave Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, coinciding with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s expected arrival in Islamabad ahead of a visit to New Delhi as part of efforts to ensure a diplomatic solution to the crisis between

the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

Foreign ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council that includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia, urged India and Pakistan on Saturday to show self-restraint and give diplomacy a chance to resolve the crisis.

“That would open the way to a political action aimed at preserving the security and stability of the region,” said Omani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Yussef bin Alawi.

“The GCC’s contacts with India and Pakistan are continuing ... to avert a military confrontation,” said Alawi, whose country holds the annual chair

of the group of Gulf Arab oil monarchies, home to hundreds of thousands of expatriate workers from both India and Pakistan.—AFP