Washington: The United States has insisted that a telephone call to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, made at the request of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, by Secretary of State Colin Powell led to the Indo-Pak dialogue which defused a crisis that could have led to a nuclear war.

"The story as told by the Secretary (Powell) is the true story," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters reacting to former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh's strong denial that such a call was ever made.

Boucher said he did not know exactly what Jaswant Singh had said. "I guess I sort of heard about these remarks."

"The Secretary (Powell) has several times sort of described the efforts that he made to try to support the Indian and Pakistani Governments as they made efforts to work together, that this has been a matter that we have long supported with our policy.

Singh on Tuesday (Oct 26) dismissed as "fabricated and baseless" Powell's claim that he had set up the telephonic conversation between Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali leading to the current peace process between the two neighbours.

"Powell has never spoken on telephone ever. The way he has gone about claiming credit is a total concoction and a matter of imagination the way he conjured up biological weapons in Iraq," Singh had said in New Delhi.+