NEW DELHI, 15 September 2003 — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, denounced by Al-Qaeda as a “traitor”, should be bold enough to join India as an ally against terrorism, India’s foreign minister said at the weekend.

“By all means. I have no hesitation in saying that,” Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha told AFP in an interview.

“If Pakistan can cooperate with the United States with regard to fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, why can’t Pakistan cooperate with India in fighting terrorism in India and specially in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

“I can’t understand what is holding (us) up. We are ready to cooperate with Pakistan in this fight, even with Musharraf,” Sinha said, arguing that India was the first country to “lend legitimacy to General Musharraf” following his 1999 coup.

In an audiotape broadcast Wednesday by the Al-Jazeera television network, Al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, purportedly called on Islamists to rise up against “traitor Musharraf” for “selling Muslims’ blood in Afghanistan” and handing over “the Arab mujahedeen to crusader America”.

“Not only this. He opened up nuclear installations to US inspection, choked off the jihad in Kashmir... and is (planning) to recognize Israel — all for a handful of dollars the Americans stack in his pocket...,” said Zawahiri.

“Act, O Muslims in Pakistan, before you wake up from your slumber to find Hindu soldiers raiding your homes in complicity with the Americans.”

In the interview, Sinha deplored what he called “cross-border terrorism” in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, where rebels have been waging a 14-year insurgency that has so far claimed 38,000 lives.

Separatists put the toll at between 80,000 and 100,000.

He said the flow of rebels from the Pakistani zone of the disputed state into the Indian side had not stopped despite the “hand of friendship” to Islamabad extended April 18 by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

“There (has been) no change on the ground,” Sinha complained.

“We have killed or intercepted a number of terrorists who tried to cross the Line of Control (LOC),” he added, referring to the de facto border that divides India and Pakistan in Kashmir.

“Has Pakistan intercepted one terrorist? Have they killed one terrorist?” Sinha asked. There are several hundred thousands Indian soldiers on the LOC, but there is an “equivalent” number on the Pakistani side, he said, deploring what he implied was Pakistani inaction.

Sinha, who will be in New York between Sept. 20 and 29 for the United Nations General Assembly, said there would be “two or three occasions” when he and his Pakistani counterpart, Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri, would be attending the same multilateral forums.

“We can’t avoid looking at each other’s face can we?” he said.

But he ruled out a Musharraf-Vajpayee summit on the sidelines of the UN assembly, saying it was “premature”.

“We are ready for a dialogue. We have existing channels,” Sinha said.

“Dialogue when it begins will have to be sustained and held in the most conducive atmosphere.

“In order to make the dialogue productive and meaningful, cross-border terrorism has to stop.”

Talks, however, would have to be broader than on the future of Kashmir, Sinha said.

India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir as their own and have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over the Himalayan state.

“The problem is that Pakistan says Jammu and Kashmir is the central issue,” he said, using India’s official name for the state.

“How can they unilaterally say that?” he asked.

“We will follow the composite dialogue process,” Sinha said.

The “step by step” process of normalization of relations is going to take time, he cautioned.