India Must Help to End Terror: Kasuri

Author: 
Agencies
Publication Date: 
Tue, 2003-10-14 03:00

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, 14 October 2003 — Pakistan could use its political clout to end cross-border violence in Kashmir but said yesterday India must reciprocate to bring peace to the disputed area. Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, speaking ahead of an Oct. 16-17 Islamic summit in Malaysia, said Islamabad had sought for fellow Muslim states to back its stance despite New Delhi’s reservations.

“It’s like saying the Israelis should not discuss Palestine,” he told reporters in reply to questions about Indian objections to Pakistan having raised the Kashmir issue in Malaysia. “But we are prepared to discuss matters with India bilaterally but India can’t have it both ways.”

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told the United Nations in a speech last month that Islamabad would be prepared to “encourage a general cessation of violence in Kashmir involving reciprocal obligations and restraints on Indian forces” and Kashmiri rebels, a proposal India rejected.

Kasuri accepted that Pakistan did have a lot of influence among Kashmiris.

“For 55, 56 years, we support the cause of the people of Kashmir, but we don’t control them, we don’t order them around. What we need to do is to give hope to the people of Kashmir so that people feel there’s hope at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

Musharraf Rules Out Forging Links With Israel to Spite India

Pakistan might establish ties with Israel if progress is made on the Palestinian front but will not do so merely to offset India’s use of its Israeli connections to court the United States, President Pervez Musharraf said in remarks published yesterday.

“We are not ready to do anything to please others at the expense of our national interests,” Musharraf told the UAE daily Khaleej Times when asked if Pakistan would forge links with Israel to counter India’s perceived use of the Jewish state to get closer to Washington.

“We have a good relationship with the US as partners in combating terrorism, but we have no relation whatsoever with Israel,” he said. “We have always been ... in support of the Palestinian cause. If the peace process moves forward in justice, we can revise our policy with Israel.

“We cannot do anything against the wish of the people of Pakistan ... There is a genuine public opinion here which is totally against Israel,” Musharraf added in an interview with the English-language newspaper.

Asked whether a recent deal under which Israel will sell three Phalcon airborne early warning radar systems to India would spark an arms race between Islamabad and New Delhi, Musharraf said his government was trying to avert such a race and stick to a strategy of deterrence.

“We try to avoid the armament race as we have evolved a strategy of deterrence ... And in case of conflict it will be a no-win situation or we will end it favorably,” he said.

The South Asian neighbors launched peace overtures in April but the process appears to have become bogged down in differences over their long-running dispute over the Himalayan state of Kashmir, split between the two and claimed by both.

Musharraf also said Muslim countries must adopt a strategy of “enlightened moderation” amid the new turbulence in global politics. Referring to the turmoil in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan, Musharraf argued against a confrontational approach.

In the face of “so much violence and hatred in the world” there were two courses of action, he said. “One is the confrontational approach where we respond in an equally aggressive and militant mode against whatever we are seeing.”

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