Islamabad: Pakistan has handed over a long list of Defence items including F-16 aircraft to the US for immediate acquisition to achieve conventional parity with India, but US officials seemed non-committal on the issue and wanted to see de- escalation of tensions.

"Pakistan has given a list of Defence items of its choice to be acquired from US to the American Defence delegation," Pakistan Defence Secretary Lt General (retired) Hamid Nawaz Khan, said at a joint press conference at Rawalpindi at the close of a two-day meeting or the Pak-US Defence Consultative Group.

However the US Under Secretary of Defence (Policy) Douglas J Feith, who headed the 40 member American delegation of the DCG, said US is "interested in seeing the risks of war between India and Pakistan diminish", adding that all the diplomatic channels would be mobilised to get rid of the problem.

"We did discuss the issue of Kashmir and standoff between India and Pakistan and US is optimistic of seeing the de-escalation in the standoff," he said.

Khan said there was a "dire" need to keep up the deterrence level by Pakistan in conventional sector in order to deter India from having any "adventuristic" designs.

He said the list carried a modern requirement in Defence for armed forces, which included a batch F-16 withheld by the United States in 1988 due to imposition of sanctions.

The sanctions were subsequently lifted in 2001 after Pakistan agreed to co-operate after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The next meeting of the DGC will be held in Washington in March, 2003.

PTI