NEW DELHI, 23 January 2003 — War cannot end terrorism, India’s president said yesterday in an apparent reference to proposed military action against Iraq. President Abdul Kalam made the remarks at a gathering of around 170 officials and members of Parliament from 85 countries to mark the golden jubilee of India’s Parliament, where the issue of terrorism topped the agenda.
“Can we remove terrorism by war? Nations have been destroyed by war. Has the world eliminated terrorism? No. Not at all. Is there a solution?” Kalam said while inaugurating the three-day conference. Kalam said one of the solutions to terrorism is for people to become “enlightened human beings.”
“When there is a vision for a nation with focused mission, problems like terrorism and violence will be eliminated,” the president said. “Terrorism results from various factors like difference in ideologies, religious fanaticism, painful historical memories, discrimination and enmity between organizations and nations.”
The root causes of terrorism, he said, are poverty, illiteracy and unemployment.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee asked the gathering to consider how parliamentarians can strengthen “mutual cooperation in the fight against terrorism and extremism.”
“The dogmas that sustain dictatorships of all stripes and advertise their superiority over democracy in development and human welfare have crumbled,” Vajpayee said. “Coups, bloody power struggles and military takeovers have come to be seen as anathema to the ethos of our times. Even rulers in khaki have felt the need to take some kind of democratic legitimacy,” he said, referring to Pakistan’s military government which recently organized federal elections.
Asserting the importance of Indian democracy, Vajpayee said, “Democracy disallows discrimination on any ground. In this sense, democracy has deep roots in India’s national ethos and our ancient culture, which teach respect for divergent and even dissenting points of view.”
He said democracy should be developed as “an effective instrument for fulfilling people’s aspirations and resolving conflicts and contentious issues.”
“Democracy is that system in which there can be opposition without hatred and power can change hands without resort to violence.”
“If the 20th century saw the global growth of democracy, the new century should see its further expansion and enrichment. History has proved time and again that free and democratic societies are the ones that are creative, self-corrective and self-regenerative,” he said.
The speaker of the lower house, Manohar Joshi, called on parliamentarians to come together in “unitedly fighting the terrorist menace.”
Senior Indian official K.C. Pant also accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of exploiting neighboring countries to create instability in India. “While there has been some success in dismantling the terrorism infrastructure in Pakistan, we have reports that Pakistani intelligence agencies are relocating terrorists to (Pakistan-administered Kashmir) and redeploying them against India in Kashmir,” he said.
“Pakistani intelligence agencies are increasingly making use of the territory of our other neighbors — Nepal and Bangladesh — to create instability in the Indian heartland,” added Pant, a member of India’s security Cabinet. “Unless the source of the terrorism — the training camps run by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and fundamentalist parties — are neutralized, the problem will not disappear,” he said, kicking off a conference debate on terrorism.
