NEW DELHI, Sept 6 — The chief executive of Pakistan, Gen Pervez Musharraf, might find it highly embarrassing in internationalising the Kashmir issue at the millennium summit of the United Nations in New York with the Al-Badr supremo admitting that terrorists from seven countries are presently operating in Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan watchers and Kashmir experts believe that General Musharraf, faced as he is with simmering discontent to his rule among the ruling elite of Punjabis in the powerful army establishment, is bound to find the statement of Al-Badr’s commander-in-chief Bakht Zamin Khan disconcerting.

Al-Badr, a feared terrorist outfit of foreign mercenaries like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, has gone public that terrorists currently operating in Jammu and Kashmir are from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Bangladesh and Sudan.

Khan, as the numero uno of Al-Badr, has in an article in the August 24 issue of Kahbrein considered as the mouthpiece of the terrorist organisation aided and abetted by Pakistan, said that more than 800 Jehadis of his outfit had been killed in J and K.

Sources said the unambiguous statement by Al-Badr once again nails Pakistan’s complicity in cross-border terrorism. It should bolster India’s stand further that the stalled bilateral dialogue with Pakistan can be resumed only when New Delhi has evidence that the neighbour has stopped cross-border terrorism.

The Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, during his 13-day tour of the United States of America will focus on Pakistan’s machination to bleed India through cross-border terrorism.

In his address to the international community at the United Nations on September 8, Mr Vajpayee will impress upon the industrialised North and the peace loving world for concerted and united action to crush the nefarious designs of countries like Pakistan which have consistently fomented trouble by encouraging cross-border terrorism.