Assertions from both India and Pakistan that they would never be the first to use the nuclear weapon against each other were the only outcome of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia (CICA), which was visualised as an opportunity to de-escalate tension between the two countries. The India-Pakistan score stood at one-all at the end of the day.
Both sides kept up their polemic against each other. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, both in his speech at CICA as well as at the press conference at the end of the day, said there had been no infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC). He regretted the fact that India had refused a meeting between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and himself.
The General said not a single person in Kashmir wanted to be a part of India. He evaded a question that suggested there were elements in Kashmir who wanted independence from both India and Pakistan, saying the situation would be perfectly clear if the Indian government agreed to hold a plebiscite to determine the feelings of the people of Kashmir, and foreign media allowed to visit Kashmir. India rejected as
