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Mr. President,
In his address to the General Assembly yesterday, the President of Pakistan
offered an action plan for peace between Pakistan and India. He invited India to
open a dialogue with Pakistan. He offered a reciprocal ceasefire along the Line
of Control in Kashmir. He offered to encourage a ceasefire within Indian
occupied Kashmir. He offered enhanced monitoring of the Line of Control on both
sides in Kashmir and he proposed the maintenance of arms balance both in
conventional and non-conventional sectors between India and Pakistan.
The response which we had today from the distinguished Prime Minister of India
was sadly disappointing. Disappointing for Pakistan and, I am sure,
disappointing for the international community. By this negative response, we
have lost another opportunity to build peace in South Asia. Pakistan’s offer of
help to promote a cessation of hostilities within Indian occupied Kashmir was
sadly misconstrued and misinterpreted by the distinguished Prime Minister of
India as an admission of guilt. This is preposterous.
The Kashmiri struggle is between India and the Kashmiri people. 80,000 Kashmiris
have been killed in Kashmir with impunity by 700,000 Indian occupation forces.
These Kashmiris are buried in the graveyards of Kashmir not in Pakistan. India
wants the killing to continue because it believes that even now after 12 years
of failed suppression that it can cow down the Kashmiris to give up their
struggle for liberty. India like all other colonial oppressors of the past is
mistaken surely.
Kashmir will be free one day.
The dialogue which Pakistan has proposed to India is a dialogue for peace. It is
not a favour to Pakistan. It is the only mechanism envisaged by our Charter to
promote the easing of tension and the resolution of conflict. Sadly, the Indian
Prime Minister rejected this reasonable offer for peace. This reflects the
negative stance of the ruling party, the BJP, in India.
The purpose of the so-called hard-liners in New Delhi, Mr. President, is not
cross-border terrorism. It is designed to utilize electoral gain for the Indian
ruling party for the forthcoming state elections. The BJP’s political strategy
is borne out of its victory in recent elections in Gujarat where it gained
popularity after state managed massacre of 2000 innocent Muslims, thus, is the
democracy being converted in the service of genocide. How great principles are
perverted when fascists assume power.
The BJP’s fascist doctrine perpounded by the likes of Gowalkar is well known.
This is a party, one of whose member assassinated Gandhi. It is the party which
destroyed the Babri mosque, a great citadel of the Muslim culture of India. Five
members were convicted the other day for this crime although the deputy leader
of the party was let off. At recent electoral rallies, the BJP has threatened to
destroy 3000 other mosques across India. A leader of the fascist Siv Sena, Bal
Thakeray recently called for the formation of groups to commit terrorist attacks
against Pakistan and the Muslims of India. He is still running free.
Prime Minister Vajpayee has accused Pakistan of sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir.
The Kashmiri struggle for self-determination, Mr. President, seeks to realize
the implementation of the resolutions of the Security Council calling on India
to hold a plebiscite to enable the Kashmiri people to determine their own
destiny. The Security Council has said the elections held under Indian
occupation, even if they were ever to be fair would not be a substitute for the
plebiscite under UN auspices and no elections in Kashmir has ever been free or
fair. In accordance with the UN decisions while India continues to brutally
suppress the Kashmiri freedom struggles, the Kashmiris have a legitimate right
to resist Indian occupation by all means at their disposal. This struggle cannot
be denigrated or described as terrorism. As the distinguished Secretary-General
of the United Nations has recently observed and I quote him “Internationally, we
are seeing an increasing use of what I call the “T-word” – terrorism – to
demonize political opponents, to throttle freedom of speech and the press, and
to delegitimize legitimate political grievances. We are seeing too many cases
where States living in tension with their neighbours make opportunistic use of
the fight against terrorism to threaten or justify new military action on
long-running disputes. Similarly, States fighting various forms of unrest or
insurgency are finding it tempting to abandon the slow, difficult, but sometimes
necessary processes of political negotiation for the deceptively easy option of
military action.”
Mr. President,
One can concede that India knows a lot about terrorism. It is, to use a popular
saying, the mother of terrorism. It has sponsored terrorism against each one of
its neighbours. Read the book entitled “Indian intervention in Sri Lanka: the
role of India’s intelligence agencies” by Rohan Gunaratna, “More than 20,000
Tamil militants were based in India. The first and second batch of training was
provided by the Indian Foreign Intelligence Agency, the Research and Analysis
Wing, in Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh at two Indian military facilities.
After that they set up their own training camps in South India.”
Mr. President,
Let us remember that the first suicide bomber came from this batch trained by
India. In the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh in the late 1980s, the author
continues “I met rebels who told me they had been instructed in both weaponry
and “psy ops” the term they used in India, at a camp near Dehra Dun, in the
Himalayan foothills. A decade and a half earlier India had trained other
rebels.” In Kashmir India has trained renegade Kashmiris and sent them across
the border into Pakistan for terrorist acts.”
Mr. President,
There are well documented reports also that Indian agencies have sponsored and
directed renegade groups of Kashmiris to perpetrate terrorist actions within
Indian occupied Kashmir as a means of intimidating the Kashmiris and defaming
the Kashmiri freedom struggle. This is recorded by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International and other Reports.
Mr. President,
The Indian Prime Minister spoke of Pakistan’s seeking military parity. We do
not. We seek military balance. We are entitled to equal security and we urge
India’s military suppliers not to spark another arms race in the sub-continent.
Mr. President,
It is our hope that despite Prime Minister Vajpayee’s statement today, cooler
heads, if there are any in New Delhi, will reflect and will come to the
conclusion that dialogue is the only answer to the problems that are between
India and Pakistan and that they will respond positively to the offer made by
the President of Pakistan yesterday.
I thank you, Mr. President.