Outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell has counted defusing tensions between India and Pakistan as one of the accomplishments of his department during his four-year-long tenure.

"If you look around the world at the kinds of things we have done, whether it is our interaction with the Indians and the Pakistanis on the subcontinent to defuse a conflict situation and let them know that we were their friends, each in an individual capacity, and, working together, helped them resolve some of the difficulties," Powell said in his farewell speech Tuesday.

The only other Indian reference in his address, albeit indirect, was describing his Deputy Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage as a "Buddha".

Another major Asian reference was to China where he said: "We did the same thing in our relationship with China, the other major nation that, at one time, might have been called an adversary.

"We had a problem, you will recall, in early April of 2001, with the collision between our airplanes, and everybody thought this relationship is going to a deep freeze.

"But instead, with patient diplomacy and listening to the Chinese and their concerns - their listening to us - we solved that problem, and over the last several years have put US-Chinese relations on the soundest footing that they have been in decades."

In the context of the US foreign policy on Afghanistan and Iraq, Powell said: "How we have succeeded in getting rid of two of the most despotic regimes on the face of the earth, in Kabul and Baghdad. And even though the task is difficult, how we will see to it that these two nations, Afghanistan and Iraq, have the freedom and democracy that their people richly deserve. And that will happen, and you had a lot to do with that."

During his tenure, Powell was known to have differences of opinion with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the Iraq war. There were frequent media reports of him having been sidelined by the neo-conservative hawks running America's foreign policy from the backdoors.