General Musharraf arrived at Beijing’s international airport, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said and is due to meet China’s Premier Zhu Rongji on his stopover en route to a South Asia summit in Nepal.

Diplomats and analysts said they expected him to reassure China’s leaders of his commitment to peacefully resolving the crisis. But they also said the Pakistani leader may be gauging China’s support in case the standoff deteriorated into war.

Musharraf’s visit to old ally China, the second in as many weeks, comes as Pakistani and Indian forces face off in the biggest military build-up along their border in nearly 15 years. Exchanges of gunfire occur almost daily.

Tensions between the nuclear rivals have mounted since a December 13 suicide attack on India’s Parliament, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.

In a telephone conversation this morning ahead of Musharraf’s arrival, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan both called upon the South Asian foes to avoid escalation of the conflict, Xinhua reported.

Tang warned that war between India and Pakistan would be destabilising for all of Asia, the official news agency said. “If the situation gets out of control and results in large scale armed conflict, not only would India and Pakistan both suffer, it would also influence the peace process in Afghanistan, and endanger the stability and development of South Asia and even all of Asia,” Tang said.

Musharraf is expected to reassure Chinese leaders he will “pursue all diplomatic means to resolve this issue’’, a Western diplomat said.

“(But) if push comes to shove, and there is some military action between India and Pakistan, Musharraf will be keen to find out from the Chinese how far their support goes,” he said.

“China hopes India and Pakistan can use relaxed dialogue to reduce tension,’’ said South Asia specialist Sun Shihai, deputy director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Crawford, Texas: US President George W. Bush enlisted British Prime Minister Tony Blair in trying to nudge India and Pakistan into talks on resolving their military standoff, the White House said.

Mr Bush telephoned Mr Blair, who was heading for meetings in South Asia, to discuss tensions that have flared between India and Pakistan since the December 13 attack on Indian Parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistani militants. It was the second time the two leaders spoke in five days.

Citing US law enforcement authorities, the paper said Reid, accused of trying to destroy a trans-Atlantic airliner by detonating explosives in his shoes, had several telephone conversations with Moussaoui toward the end of 2000.

The phone calls are the second link between the two men, who also worshiped at the same London mosque.

British intelligence agents intercepted the conversations, which ended in December, 2000, when Moussaoui left England for Pakistan, The Washington Times said.

Reid is being held without bail in Boston. Just before Christmas, passengers and crew on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami overpowered the 28-year-old Briton and strapped him down with belts after a flight attendant saw him trying to set his shoes on fire.

An FBI agent said Reid’s shoe bombs were powerful enough to blow a hole in the plane.

Meanwhile, a Virginia court has set October 14 for the trial of alleged Al-Qaida terrorist mastermind Zacarias Moussaoui in connection with the September 11 terror attacks on the USA, on charges carrying death penalty, after the accused entered the equivalent of a plea of not guilty.

Moussaoui (33) a French citizen of Moroccan descent was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring with accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network to murder more than 3,300 persons who perished when the four hijacked jetliners crashed in New York, Pennsylvaia and Washington on September 11, 2001.

Jury selection for the trial will begin on September 30, 2002.

Dressed in a one piece dark green jumpsuit with the word “prisoner” inscribed on the back, the bald, bearded Moussaoi told US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema: “In the name of Allah, I do not have anything to plea and enter no plea. Thank you very much”.

The judge said she presumed that he meant a plea of not guilty which was agreed by Moussaoi’s lawyer.

But the defence counsel objected to the date for trial on the ground that it was too near the events of September 11. Brinkema then entered ‘innocent pleas’ to each of the conspiracy charges against Moussaoi, and set the date for trial.

The gesture underscored the confidence of the interim government that took power on December 22, about five weeks after the Taliban collapsed, worn out and bloodied by several weeks of blistering US bombing.

An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the new government had asked his organisation to arrange for the prisoners to be sent home after their release from a Kabul prison.

“I am feeling well because I think I will go to our home,” said Yar Mohammad, who said he had been held by the Northern Alliance for five years.

Thousands of Taliban fighters have been captured in the last few weeks, but many still remain at large in isolated pockets throughout the country.

The new government has pledged to go easy on rank and file Taliban fighters and only punish the leadership — including Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is still at large.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Afghan troops today launched a massive operation to hunt down fleeing members of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network in eastern Nangarhar province, the Afghan Islamic Press said.

Some 800 men from the eastern region’s Shura, or council, are involved in the extensive “clean up operation” in the Chapparhar area south of the provincial capital Jalalabad, the report said.

The council, which administers the province, believes Al-Qaida fighters who fled the US bombardment of the mountainous Tora Bora region last month are hiding in Chapparhar, it said.

Quoting witnesses, it said the troops engaged in the intense search were facing no resistance.

Chapparhar sits between Tora Bora and Jalalabad and the authorities suspect many Arab fighters took refuge in the area.

WASHINGTON: The USA has an assurance from Afghan leader that if Mullah Omar surrenders, he will be handed over to US custody, chief Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke has said.

“We expect to have control of him”, Clarke told a press briefing here yesterday.

An estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Taliban fighters who have been holding out near the city of Baghran were negotiating with anti-Taliban forces, said Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem.

“But I think its a leap of faith if we believe that is on the behalf of Mullah Omar himself,” Stufflebeem said. “These are Taliban forces looking to negotiate themselves out of a predicament.”

A commander of the anti-Taliban forces, Jamal Khan, said his officials had confirmed that Omar was in hiding somewhere in Baghran, a mountainous region north of Kandahar.

Though common Pashtuns when confronted by Indians turn nostalgic about centuries-old historic ties with New Delhi, the ever lurking erstwhile Taliban and Al-Qaida elements amongst them, make sure that any bonhomie is shortlived and often open threats are held out to clear off the area.

Some Indian journalists who dared to undertake a perilous five-hour arduous journey from the Afghan capital to erstwhile Taliban stronghold of Kandahar described the travel as a “nightmare”, with every 10 km stretch a close shave from being gunned down.

“Though officially the Taliban may have thrown in the towel, their armed cadres in changed colours still dominate the southern Pashtun majority provinces like Gardez, Ghazni, Zabul Paktya, Helmand and Uzurgun right up to Kandahar making travel in the area extremely difficult for Indians, Europeans and Americans,” the five such Indian journalists said.

Even at Kandahar, where there is a sizeable American army present, the Indian journalists after harrowing encounters on the road had to seek intervention of the prominent Northern Alliance Governor Agha Gulsherzai, who posted his guards outside their hotels.

But away from eyes of the Taliban and Al-Qaida cadres, the commonfolk Pashtuns were more forthcoming and wanting the revival of pre-Partition traditional ties with India and community leaders said in this direction New Delhi should re-establish consular offices in Jalalabad and Kandahar, a practice which came to an end after the ouster of King Zahir Shah in 1973.

They blamed New Delhi for cutting off contacts with the region in post-Daud Khan regime and close proximity of the area to Pakistan for the emergence of anti-India sentiments and forces like Taliban.

Pashtun tribal leaders felt that the revival of consular contacts would help in nurturing back to old heights the traditional ties between the two sides.

Pashtun tribal chiefs from Khost, Paktya and Ghazni who are arriving daily in the Afghan capital in big motorcades to swear loyalty to new interim President Hamid Karzai, told PTI that at heart Pashtuns felt much closer to New Delhi rather than Islamabad, but said India’s neglect of the community for the past over 20 years had forced Pashtuns into Pakistan’s lap.

“New Delhi cut us off in post-Bacha Khan (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan) era as well as after the Communist coup in 1978”, the powerful Pashtun commanders said, adding that this neglect had helped Pakistan to secure a toehold in Pashtun heartland of Kandahar, Ghazni, Gardez, Khost and Nangarhar provinces.