ISLAMABAD, 16 June 2005 — Former Pakistani Army chief Gen Mirza Aslam Beg yesterday confirmed that the country’s Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, ran a training camp for militants fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir.
“I was the army chief in 1991 when Sheikh Rashid used to run the camp for Kashmiri militants, some 16 km from Islamabad,” Beg said here. The controversy surrounding Sheikh Rashid, who plans to travel to Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, on June 30, erupted following a statement by the Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik here last Monday.
Yasin, who heads his own faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and currently is visiting Pakistan, said Sheikh Rashid used to run a training camp in the initial days of the Kashmir movement and about 3,500 boys were accommodated at his farm house for the purpose.
Yasin said they came to Pakistan for military training in 1988 and Sheikh Rashid used to take them to the Northwestern Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan for various assignments.
Sheikh Rashid’s intended Kashmir visit may be jeopardized following Yasin’s statement. Sources in Delhi said yesterday the authorities had decided not to allow Sheikh Rashid to travel to Kashmir on the June 30 Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus. Though Sheikh Rashid had tried damage control by saying Tuesday “there were many Sheikhs in Rawalpindi”, the Indian authorities aren’t satisfied. The External Affairs Ministry has already expressed concern on the issue.
Yasin, through his statements, has been attracting a lot of media attention ever since he landed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir June 2. Immediately after crossing the Line of Control (LoC), Malik had “thanked the people of Azad Kashmir” by calling every house in Pakistan-administered Kashmir a “base camp for the pro-independence JKLF”.
Known for bold and unreserved comments, Yasin is seen in Kashmir as the “pro-active separatist leader who is a hardliner among the moderates”.
Meanwhile, the Dawn daily reported yesterday Yasin has been advised complete rest after he collapsed due to fatigue.
The nine-member delegation of separatist leaders from Jammu and Kashmir on a two-week visit to Pakistani Kashmir and Pakistan were attending a lunch hosted here Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations committee when Yasin collapsed.
The doctor who attended Yasin blamed the illness on fatigue due to the hectic schedule of the Kashmiri leaders who arrived in Pakistan-administered Kashmir June 2.
Mohammad Rafiq Dar, secretary general of the JKLF faction in Pakistani Kashmir and Pakistan, said Yasin was likely to cancel yesterday’s trip to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The separatist leaders praised New Delhi yesterday for allowing them to travel to Pakistan to discuss proposals to end a decades-old dispute over the Himalayan region.
The delegation from the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference met with leaders from the Pakistani side of Kashmir in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad, yesterday.
In a statement released after the meeting, both sides thanked India for not obstructing the Kashmiri leaders’ two-week tour.
“The same reasonable attitude is expected of the Indian government in future,” the statement read. The Kashmiri leaders arrived June 2 in Pakistani Kashmir on a bus service linking the Pakistani- and Indian-controlled sides of the Himalayan region. — Additional input from agencies.
