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India bars broadcast of Bhutto interview -producer

NEW DELHI: The Indian government had barred state television from broadcasting a controversial interview with Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the producer of the interview said on Monday.

But the government has released a book critical of New Delhi's policy in troubled Kashmir after impounding it for a month, author Paula Newberg, said.

Eyewitness, a weekly news programme broadcast on Doordarshan state television and produced by the Hindustan Times Ltd, said the "critical and controversial" interview with Bhutto had been scheduled for broadcast on August 13.

Eyewitness said in a statement the interview "has been entirely disallowed by the Indian government". Television industry officials said it was the Foreign Ministry's decision to bar the broadcast with the leader of India's longtime foe.

"They feel that with parliament in session, they do not want Indian media to provide a platform for the prime minister of Pakistan," one senior industry official said.

Government officials were not available for comment.

The television industry official said the government might allow the interview to be broadcast in two or three weeks once the month-long monsoon session of parliament ended. However, Eyewitness said it would not be interested because the material would be outdated.

Eyewitness said that in the interview, conducted in Islamabad to mark Pakistan's independence day on August 15, Bhutto commented on the abduction of Westerners in Kashmir, Indo-Pakistani relations and her own relations with the Pakistani opposition and the army.

Bhutto also touched on India's allegations that Pakistan arms and trains separatist militants in Kashmir and she "makes a strong plea for talks with India and states her condition", the privately-produced news programme said.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since winning independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

At the weekend the government released a book entitled "Double Betrayal: Repression and Insurgency in Kashmir" which U.S. author Newberg said had been impounded in an apparent attempt to muzzle criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir.

Newberg said her book was critical of both India and Pakistan for what she called an absence of will to resolve their half-century-long dispute over the Himalayan region.

The government released the box of books at the weekend after stamping a map of divided Kashmir in the volume with the phrase, "Boundaries shown in the map are neither authenticated nor correct".-Reuter