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Wednesday,
June 5, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Jehadis to
announce ceasefire Apply Bush
doctrine to Pak: Mansingh Powell for
pressure diplomacy
Czechs
told not to travel to India Britain
hunts for 50 Al-Qaida men |
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UK to
recruit cops from India Ruling on
Pearl video reserved Woody
Allen wins Spanish prize
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Jehadis to announce ceasefire
Islamabad, June 4
“We are grateful to Pakistan for the moral and diplomatic support it has extended to us. We are aware that it has now become almost impossible for Islamabad to resist the world pressure and therefore we will like to postpone our jehad in Jammu and Kashmir for some other opportune and favourable time,” the Pakistan Observer, quoting a militant commander, said today. The newspaper said with Pakistan under tremendous international pressure to halt incursions, the jehadi groups could come to its rescue by announcing a “dramatic and stunning but conditional ceasefire”, which would change the course of events in the region. It was to be seen whether the truce would be permanent, it added. If there was no “acceptable-to-all” resolution of the Kashmir issue within the next six months, the militant outfits would resort to armed struggle once again, the newspaper said. However, some of the militant groups accused Pakistan of letting them down. “We have been betrayed by Pakistan and are under tremendous pressure to suspend our activities,” a militant commander of another jehadi outfit told the Pakistan Observer. Earlier, the Hizbul Mujahideen, a militant group operating in Jammu and Kashmir, unilaterally declared a ceasefire on July 22, 2000, but withdrew the truce on August 8, 2000. Meanwhile, Pakistan sealed all points on the Line of Control (LoC) that were being used by the militants from crossing into Kashmir, the newspaper, quoting a knowledgeable source, said.
UNI  |
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Apply Bush doctrine to Pak: Mansingh
Washington, June 4 The Bush doctrine holds that any individual or country engaging in terrorism, harbouring terrorism or funding terrorism should be treated as terrorist, Mr Mansingh pointed out last night in an appearance on MSNBC-TV. Pakistan, he said, had been engaged in cross-border terrorism for 15 years and hence it was a clear case where the Bush doctrine applied. “Here is a country that is supposed to be an ally of the USA in the fight against terrorism which is actually sending terrorists across the border to create havoc in India. So it is clear the Bush doctrine should be applied to Pakistan.” After September 11, more than a 1,000 persons have been victims of terrorist violence in India. “If cross-border terrorism stops — and it has to be stopped permanently — India will be prepared to begin de-escalation.” Referring to President Musharraf’s statement in Almaty that “you can’t clap with one hand,” Mr Mansingh said General Musharraf had kept “one hand free while with the other he is holding a gun at India’s head.” “That is why he cannot clap. Put aside your gun; stop cross-border terrorism,” Mr Mansingh said.
PTI |
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Powell for pressure diplomacy
Washington, June 4 Curbing Pakistani Islamic militants from infiltrating Kashmir is the first priority of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Defence Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld, who are travelling separately to India and Pakistan in the coming days. The next step will be to urge India to reciprocate, presumably by withdrawing hundreds of thousands of troops from the frontier with Pakistan, Mr Powell said yesterday. From there, Mr Powell hopes to move India and Pakistan into face-to-face negotiations. Mr Armitage is due in Pakistan on Thursday and in India on Friday. Mr Rumsfeld is expected in the region this weekend. Mr Powell, at a news conference in Barbados where he attended an Organisation of American States Foreign Ministers meeting, said he was heartened that both India and Pakistan had played down the possible use of nuclear weapons. “It would be absolutely horrible in 2002 for any nation to use nuclear weapons in a situation such as this,” Mr Powell said. The last three US administrations have had to become deeply involved in the Kashmir issue to avert a feared nuclear war, said Mr Lee Feinstein, who was Deputy Director for policy planning at the State Department during the Clinton administration. Mr Robert Oakley, US Ambassador to Pakistan from 1988 to 1991, enthusiastically endorsed the Bush administration’s strategy, saying that it would lead to decreased tension. “The question is then whether we can work out a long-term solution with a permanent decrease of tensions, stabilising the region and conducting the war on terrorism,” Mr Oakley said in an interview.
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US Indians following stand-off
Santa Clara (California), June 4 “I just feel very scared,” Bais said as she shopped at an Indian market in this Silicon Valley city. “They should probably think of having a bunker underground.” Indians and Pakistanis living in the USA are closely following the two nations’ standoff, supplementing US news reports by reading Indian and Pakistan media web sites and calling or e-mailing relatives. Some are deeply fearful South Asia could soon plunge into war. Others dismiss the current tensions as little more than rhetoric and have planned trips back to the area, even though the USA urged American citizens in India to leave the country. At the Bharat Bazar, which sits in a stretch of Silicon Valley known as “Little India”, almost every person in the shop selling Indian groceries, videos and saris had a strong opinion about the situation - though they there were a range of viewpoints. “You feel helpless,” said Mr Pankaj Kaul, whose wife and four-year-old child live in Kashmir. At Mr Kaul’s urging, they plan to leave the land his family has lived on for generations and stay for a few months with his uncles in south India. “I’m asking as to when are they leaving, or have they booked their flight tickets and train,” said the 34-year-old.
AP |
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Czechs told not to travel to India Prague, June 4 Prague is not for the moment considering withdrawing diplomats from the region, said ministry spokesman Ales
Pospisil, adding that some administrative staff and diplomats’ families had in any case started leaving. Security at the Czech Embassy in Islamabad has been strengthened recently, he added.
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Britain
hunts for 50 Al-Qaida men London, June 4 Many are believed to be British-born Pakistanis who travelled to South Asia to take part in the `holy war’ and returned home following the collapse of the Taliban regime last November. Their existence has been revealed by documents found in Kabul in the days after the fall of the Taliban. One list, found by journalists in a terrorist house in the city and passed to the British authorities, gives 48 names ‘of people in the UK’. The document also details where the fighters were trained. The 48 names given are of Pakistanis. However, analysts believe that many are British dual nationals who travelled to South Asia to join hardline ‘jehadi’ groups. Islamic leaders in Britain, such as Omar Mohammed Bakri of the Al-Muhajiroun, have boasted of recruiting a large number of British Muslims to fight along with extremist groups in conflicts overseas. A secret assessment from a British counter-intelligence, MI5, reveals that security service experts believe that there has been ‘an increase in the number of Muslims in the UK who have undergone some form of military training, including indoctrination into extremist beliefs’. The MI5, the document says, is ‘concerned that the presence of returned jihad trainees in the UK may encourage the radicalisation of the British Muslim community’. Members of Parliament last week called on the government to crack down on the recruitment of terrorists in the UK. “There is more evidence that individuals in Britain are responsible for recruitment and funding for terrorism and this has to be stopped,” Labour MP Andrew Dismore said. According to the document, the men were trained largely in towns in east Pakistan where hardline Sunni Muslim groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba have their bases. The two groups provide many of the militants active in Kashmir. The activities of these groups are the main cause of the current tension between India and Pakistan. Hundreds of young British Muslims join such groups every year. Both groups provided many fighters to the Al-Qaida and the Taliban and boast of receiving funding from Britain. A second document, also found in Kabul in November, gives the names of members of a fighting unit. Of the 21 militants of the `Group of Abdullah Bin Rawaha’ nine are described as British. The unit appears to be funded by Osama bin Laden and led by Arab militants. It was from such groups, trained in Al-Qaida camps, that many of the organisation’s top terrorists were recruited. Documents found by Northern Alliance commanders in the north of Afghanistan after battles in Kundoz also list British fighters and senior officers among Afghan troops said they were aware of British fighters in the ranks of the enemy.
Observer News Service |
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UK to recruit cops from India
London, June 4 As far as recruitment to the police force is concerned, it will be short-term contracts and the recruits would have to have a good command of English and be prepared to take an oath to the Queen, he said. Commonwealth countries would be the most likely targets because for most English is the common language. He said the Scotland Yard needed thousands of new officers for an expanding city and give the public the policemen on the beat they wanted to see.
PTI |
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Ruling on Pearl video reserved Karachi, June 4 Defence lawyers for four men on trial for Pearl’s murder in an anti-terrorism court had asked for a copy of the video so that experts could review it to determine its authenticity. British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is charged with masterminding Pearl’s kidnapping while three other men are on trial for allegedly acting on his instructions. All four have pleaded not guilty to the charges of terrorism, kidnapping and murder and their trial is being heard behind closed doors in Hyderabad prison, 115 km north of Karachi. The murder trial resumes tomorrow. After the video was played at the trial earlier last month, a defence lawyer said he believed it was fake. The prosecution has opposed to giving defence lawyers the video.
Reuters |
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Woody Allen wins Spanish prize Oviedo (Spain), June 4 |
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In video: Nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan will damage
the health system of the respective countries. (
