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Kofi Annan calls on India, Pak to show restraint

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has expressed regret at the loss of life resulting from India's downing of a Pakistani plane and called on both nuclear weapons-countries to exercise maximum restraint.

''The secretary-general regrets the loss of life following the downing of a Pakistani aircraft by the Indian Air Force,'' Annan said yesterday in a statement issued through his spokesman.

The UN spokesman said Annan was ''increasingly concerned at the repeated incidents between India and Pakistan and urges that the differences between them be resolved by peaceful means.''

''He calls on both countries to exercise maximum restraint. The secretary-general looks forward to an early resumption of the bilateral dialogue between the two countries in the spirit of the Lahore Declaration,'' the statement added.

Pakistan's new UN envoy, ambassador Inamul Haque, presented his credentials to the secretary-general yesterday and referred to the 'unprovoked shooting down' of the Pakistani plane.

After conveying the greetings of his government and its leaders, Haque told Annan, ''We have problems on the long-standing issue of Jammu and Kashmir, the situation in Afghanistan. And the difficulties in this area have been accentuated only this morning by the unprovoked shooting down of a Pakistani plane which was on training, and was an unarmed plane and which has resulted in the (loss of) life of 16 people.''

Haque said he hoped ''this unfortunate incident will not be allowed to get out of hand and we will seek your assistance in resolving this problem.''

The secretary-general did not refer to the plane incident in greeting Haque, at least while a UN television camera was taping the scene.

Haque, 58, served as ambassador to China from April 1997 until last month. He succeeded ambassador Ahmad Kamal as Pakistan's UN envoy.

UNI

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