M A I N   N E W S

Agra process to continue: PM
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 6
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today said that New Delhi would continue the peace process set in motion at Agra even as its efforts to normalise relations with Islamabad had not yielded the desired results so far.

“Our efforts have not yielded the desired results so far. Yet, a definite step has been taken in the quest for peace. We will continue the process set in motion at Agra,” Mr Vajpayee said addressing chiefs of police and intelligence agencies from states and Union Territories at Vigyan Bhavan here.

Stressing that dialogue alone could build mutual trust and understanding between India and Pakistan, the Prime Minister said “despite constant provocation and unabated cross-border terrorism, I took the initiative to invite the President of Pakistan, Gen Pervez Musharraf for talks.”

“It remains our hope that dialogue alone can build mutual trust and understanding and help us arrive at a negotiated settlement over various outstanding bilateral issues, including Kashmir,” he asserted while scoffing at reports that the Agra summit was a failure.

The Prime Minister’s statement assumes significance as he is scheduled to meet General Musharraf on September 25 in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Expressing serious concern over the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, Mr Vajpayee said “everyone knows about the many initiatives that we recently took to end militancy in the state. For over six months, we refrained from initiating combat operations. We did so in the hope that good sense will prevail among the various terrorist groups and their mentors to begin meaningful dialogue for peace in the area.”

Lauding the exemplary work of the security forces, Mr Vajpayee said keeping pace with the political and diplomatic initiative in Jammu and Kashmir, the security forces had wrested the initiative through some extremely well coordinated, imaginative, and sustained anti-insurgency operations.

Referring to the coming Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the Prime Minister said as the Assembly poll was round the corner, he was confident that the security forces and the administration would rise to the occasion to ensure free and fair elections.

However, the Prime Minister asked the security forces, especially the police, to be more imaginative in dealing with the menace of religious militancy and fundamentalism.

“The global wind of religious militancy has touched our country as well. It is a menace that the police need to tackle imaginatively, without compromising in any way our ideals of secularism, religious freedom, and communal harmony,“ the Prime Minister said.

“The police has to take a holistic view of things in the discharge of its primary duty — that of maintaining law and order and upholding the rule of law throughout the country,” he said.

About disturbances in the North-East, Mr Vajpayee said the Centre was committed to usher in a new era of peace, normalcy, and all-round development in a region suffering from decades of insurgency, militancy, and violence.

“We are trying to institutionalise the peace efforts initiated earlier with the principal Naga militant group, the NSCN (I-M). We hope to achieve concrete results without in any way adversely affecting the interests and endangering the territorial integrity of other states,” he said.

Laying emphasis on modernisation of the police force, Mr Vajpayee said the Centre had last year increased five-fold the funds for such modernisation — from Rs 200 crore to Rs 1,000 crore a year for 10 years, with a matching contribution from the state governments.