New Delhi, September 18
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took up the issue of terrorism firmly with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf when he hosted dinner for the General in New York on September 14 and presented him a list of 33 terrorist training camps being run in Pakistan and in the territory under the Pakistani control.
The Prime Minister told Gen Musharraf that these terror camps were being run in Punjab (eight), North West Frontier Province (15), Sindh (one), Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (6) and northern areas (three), despite a categoric written assurance by Gen Musharaf in January 2004 that no territory under the Pakistani control would be used for propagating terrorist activity against India.
Gen Musharraf rejected the Indian charges and stuck to his well-known stance that nothing of the sort was happening.
During the Manmohan-Pervez talks, the two sides agreed to disagree on the issue of Kashmir.The following is the list of terror camps which the Prime Minister gave to Gen Musharraf:
Punjab (i) Changa Manga (ii) Muridke (iii) Tilla (iv) Shakergarh (v) Jhelum (vi) Chaklala (vii) Zafar Iqbal Bajwa (Gujranwala) (viii) Chistian Mandi.
NWFP (i) Shinkiari, (ii) Batrasi, (iii) Sufaida, (iv) Attarshisha, (v) Abbotabad (vi)Balakot, (vii)Kahuta, (viii) Tarbela, (ix) Umar-bin-Khitab (Manshera), (x) Jangal Mangal, (xi)
Oghi, (xii) Garhi Habibullah, (xiii) Boi, (xiv) Nowshera and (xv) Jalalabad
Sindh (i) Tandallabyar
PoK (i) Kotli(13 camps) (ii) Bagh (four) (iii)Muzaffarabad (six) (iv) Poonch (two) (v) Bhimber (one) and (vi) Mirpur(one)
Northern areas (i) Skardu(ii) Tarkuti and (iii) Gultari.
Thus the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir alone has 27 camps, taking the total number of individual camps to 54.
Key officials here feel that the two countries are going to stick to the course and their bilateral interaction is set to get into top gear next month when External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh travels to Pakistan on October 3 for talks with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and the first-ever meeting of the to-be-revived joint commission also takes place next month.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also accepted President Pervez Musharraf’s invitation to visit Pakistan and the visit may materialise sooner rather than later. In fact, Pakistan’s prestigious daily, The Dawn, reported on September 16 that Dr Manmohan Singh was likely to visit Pakistan on May 3, though there is no confirmation of the exact dates from the Indian side.
Analysts here feel much hype was being created out of the Indo-Pakistan diplomatic stand-off on Kashmir and whatever Gen Musharraf told the UN General Assembly and hours later to Dr Manmohan Singh at the dinner hosted by the latter was Gen Musharraf’s political compulsion.
The Pakistani press, in particular, has gone whole hog in asserting that the Manmohan-Pervez summit in New York was not a failure. The Dawn, in its September 16 edition, quoted Gen Musharraf in a positive manner on the Indo-Pak talks. The General also conveyed his happiness on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent talks with the All Party Hurriyat Conference leaders which he said was a sign that the peace process was moving ahead.
The Tribune understands that there is nothing on the ground to even remotely suggest that the Indo-Pakistan peace process has run into rough .A demonstration of this is that the two major confidence-building measures — the military ceasefire, in force since November 23, 2003, and the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, plying since April 7— are continuing.
