The most dangerous place on Earth

By Wolf Blitzer
CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two years ago, I went to the most dangerous spot on earth. It wasn't the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. It wasn't the Middle East where Israelis and Palestinians remain bitterly at odds. It was the so-called Line of Control in the disputed territory of Kashmir. That's where a million heavily-armed Indian and Pakistani troops face each other, at places literally eyeball to eyeball. What makes this conflict so dangerous is the fact that India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, and have made it clear that they are prepared to use them. This is how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently described to me what that nightmare scenario would mean:

"Millions of people would die in the event there were a nuclear exchange between those two countries. Water supplies would be damaged. Agriculture would be damaged. Their economies would both go into the tank. Neighboring countries would be adversely effected."

Secretary Rumsfeld, who is being sent by President Bush to India and Pakistan next week to try to defuse the tension, noted that hundreds -- if not thousands -- of American troops in the region could be immediately endangered. "Depending on which way the wind was blowing and what kind of bursts were used with a nuclear exchange, it would be a perfectly terrible, terrible thing for that part of the world, indeed for the entire world."

Unfortunately, that scenario is all too realistic. India, with a population of almost a billion people, has a much larger military than Pakistan. That's why the Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf has pointedly refused to rule out a first-use strike of nuclear weapons. If the Pakistanis felt they were about to be overwhelmed by the Indians, their temptation to use nuclear weapons would be intense.

Secretary of State Colin Powell told me this on Sunday: "The whole international community is seized with this problem É A great deal of damage could be done if a war broke out."

He says the Pakistanis must stop infiltration across the Line of Control and the Indians must de-escalate the tensions if infiltration stops. "We really do have to find a political solution. The stakes are much too high to see a conflict break out in this part of the world, especially with nuclear-armed nations."