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Thursday,
February 6, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak denies
aiding infiltration Putin holds talks with Musharraf Pervez vows support for J&K ‘struggle’ India urges USA to use force on Pak
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Probe ‘repression’, US Muslims urge UN Yugoslavia makes way for new nation
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Pak denies
aiding infiltration
Muzaffarabad, February 5 Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali also urged New Delhi to come to the negotiating table to resolve the vexed issue. “They (militants) are not being given any arms, or training or external help. The Pakistani nation supports them politically, culturally and diplomatically as a duty,” Mr Jamali told legislators in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. “As far as allegations of infiltration are concerned, it is not done by Pakistan,” he said, adding, “There is a lot of difference between a freedom struggle and terrorism. Freedom struggle is the right of the every nation. You cannot stop it.” India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and sending militants into Jammu and Kashmir, a charge that Pakistan has repeatedly denied. But a US official said last month the level of rebel infiltration into Kashmir had risen again after falling last summer, and while Pakistan may not be actively promoting the fighters, they were not being stopped. The chief of an alliance of militant groups said Kashmiri families regularly crossed the line of control that divides the region between the neighbours. “This is not infiltration or cross-border terrorism as the people have the right to liberate their families and properties...,” said Sayed Salahuddin, chief of the United Jihad Council and also the head of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen group. Mr Jamali said Pakistanis were like a ‘’solid wall’’ of support for Kashmiris in their “struggle for freedom”, while also calling for dialogue with India. “I once again today offer talks to Indian leaders, that they come to the negotiating table for a peaceful resolution of the issue according to the aspirations of the Kashmiri people,” he said, as Pakistan marked its annual
"Kashmir Solidarity Day."
Reuters |
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Putin holds talks with Musharraf
Moscow, February 5 Observing that a new fillip to development of Moscow- Islamabad ties was given after Pakistan joined the anti-terror coalition, Putin said. He hoped that the three-day visit of the Pakistani President would “provide a new impetus for development of economic and political relations.” Welcoming Musharraf in the Green Drawing room of the historic Moscow Kremlin, Putin complimented Musharraf as “not only a successful military man but also a successful politician.” Musharraf, who arrived here yesterday to patch up ties with India’s strategic ally, thanked Putin for the warm welcome. The two leaders are expected to focus on bilateral ties and key international issues, including Iraq and North Korea. “A special focus would be on South Asia and fulfilment of Pakistani obligations before the world community to crack down on terrorist outfits threatening neighbouring countries,” a Kremlin source was quoted as saying.
PTI |
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Pervez vows support for J&K ‘struggle’ Islamabad, February 5 In separate messages on the occasion of Kashmiri Solidarity Day, observed officially by Pakistan today, General Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali accused India of carrying out state-sponsored terrorism against Kashmiris and violating their human rights. They appealed to the international community to take note of it. General Musharraf said Pakistan observed Kashmir Solidarity Day every year to reaffirm its support for Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination. “The international community must not let India renege from its legal and moral obligations to let the Kashmiri people decide their future. Neither can it allow India to continue with this policy of state terrorism,” he said. General Musharraf also called the recent elections in Jammu and Kashmir a “sham”. Claiming that Pakistan had taken several steps for the commencement of dialogue for the resolution of the Kashmir issue, he said: “We call upon India... to respond positively to our peace initiatives.” Mr Jamali, in his message, said: “On assuming office of Prime Minister, I had sincerely offered the resumption of dialogue to India. Pakistan is a recognised party to the Kashmir dispute and it has moral and legal obligations to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.” “My government will, therefore, continue to extend full political, moral and diplomatic support to the freedom movement in Kashmir”, he said.
PTI |
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India urges USA to use force on Pak
Washington, February 5 The US pressure resulted in Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf turning against the Al-Qaida and the Taliban, which had been built up by Pakistan, Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace here. “In fact, Mr Musharraf made a 180 degree turn under US pressure,” he said, rejecting the view that international community, including the USA, had done all it could to persuade Pakistan to stop infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir. Mr Sibal said the USA could, if it tried hard enough, do a “repeat” of that with regard to cross-border infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir. “One cannot say at all that the USA does not have the means to apply pressure,” he said. “General Musharraf has simply gone back on his commitments,” Mr Sibal said, adding “what I would say is for the USA to determine whether there is room for further pressure.” He said the international community, including the USA, was adopting “double standards” on terrorism. “It is in a spirit of candour amongst friends that I wish to convey a certain sense of disappointment in India, born out of the perception that the international community could do more to ensure an end to cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, not as a favour to India but as a part of the international combat against terrorism.” India, said Mr Sibal, was ready to make peace even with such an “unreliable” Pakistani leadership. In its desire for progress, he said, India remains committed to a composite dialogue process to deal with all issues simultaneously, based on the universal wisdom that the most difficult issues are tackled by first addressing the ones that are easily resolved. Economic relations provide one important route to move forward, he added. “If Pakistan, as a WTO member, were to grant Most Favoured Nation Status to India and make effective
progress on the interminably long negotiation process for a South Asia Preferential Trade Agreement, it would benefit not only the people of India and Pakistan, but, by moving the SAARC economic process forward, entire South Asia,” Mr Sibal said. The USA, said Mr Sibal, had no better partner than India in combating fundamentalist terrorism and the security targets it poses. “We are both targets. The epicentre of terrorism is in our region and we have a common stake in eliminating it.” Mr Sibal stressed, both at Carnegie and later at a press conference, that there had been a remarkable change in the Indo-US relations since the 1990s.
PTI |
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Cooperate
with team, Blix tells Iraq United Nations, February 5 Warning Baghdad that it is “five minutes to midnight”, he said the situation was serious but there was still time for Iraq to reveal any banned weapons it might have or to give evidence about how and where the weapons were destroyed. Referring to the possible United States military action against Iraq, Blix said, “I don’t think the decision is final. I don’t think that end is there, that date has been set, but I think that we are moving closer and closer to it.” The Iraqi leadership must be well aware of it, he told reporters. He said from the responses he had seen, Baghdad did not seem to be prepared to hand over critical information, which was not there in the over 12,000-page declaration on the status of its weapons of mass destruction it submitted to inspectors on December 7 last. DUBAI: Iraq has to agree to let scientists be interviewed in private by UN arms monitors and U2 spy planes to overfly the country, disarmament chief Hans Blix said in remarks published on Wednesday. Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), return to Baghdad on Saturday to press their demands. The Baghdad regime must “agree to private meetings in Iraq or abroad ... and also agree that U2 planes can fly over,” he told Al-Hayat newspaper. The Iraqis must “announce that they are going to pass a law forbidding any citizen to work with weapons of mass destruction,” he added.
PTI, AFP |
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Probe ‘repression’, US Muslims urge UN Muslims and Arab and Asian Americans have petitioned to the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, to initiate an immediate inquiry into what they call “political repression” and “ethnic and religious
profiling" by the Bush administration. The Washington-based American Muslim Council in a letter addressed to Mr Annan last week said that all their appeals to American political leaders to end the “un-American” practices had fallen on deaf ears. The council cited six examples of “political repression” of Muslims and Arab and Asian Americans by the US Government. The “wrongful acts” included the Justice Department’s new policy of selectively gathering intelligence information on mosques and Muslims without having to establish any criminal connection or basis for this intrusive surveillance, the targeting of persons from Muslim countries for registration and finger-printing by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), the detention and deportation of Muslim and Arab and Asian immigrants through selective enforcement of immigration laws, the barring of Muslims from returning to the USA after visiting abroad through selective enforcement of immigration laws, the arbitrary rounding up of over 5000 citizens who were either Muslims or of Middle Eastern descent without any criminal basis for this collective suspicion and criminal processing, and the arbitrary denial of access to the American legal system through selectively classifying persons as enemy combatants. |
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Yugoslavia makes way for new nation Belgrade, February 5 “We have finished a major task and we just need some time now to breathe life into the new state,” parliamentary chairman Dragoljub Micunovic told reporters yesterday after the new Constitution was passed in the Assembly. “After both chambers of the federal Parliament adopted the constitutional charter, and following its adoption by the Serbian and Montenegrin parliaments, I proclaim the constitutional charter of Serbia and Montenegro,” he said minutes later as the new country was founded. The vote was 84 in favour and 31 against, automatically rendering the 1992 Yugoslav Constitution null and void and consigning the country to history after nine months of gruelling negotiations. The Yugoslav Parliament, which will assume a caretaker role until a new central Assembly takes over in the coming weeks, also passed a law on the technicalities for setting up the new union. The new state’s first President will be elected by its central Parliament in the coming months.
AFP |
MURDOCH TO BECOME FATHER AT 71 MADONNA EXPECTING BABY NO. 3 TRADER WINS $ 550 M CLAIM AGAINST USA MUGABE DESTROYER OF NATURE: BARDOT |
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Moscow, February 5
In video: Indo-US
relationship is multi-faceted, says Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal
Sibal. (
