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Media asked to cut focus on domestic strife

Nasrullah for OIC

summit on

Kashmir, Bosnia

SIKANDER HAYAT

ISLAMABAD: Chairman of Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir Nawabzada Nasrullah on Sunday appealed to the national newspapers to shift their focus from the domestic strife to the Kashmiris' struggle now that it has entered its most crucial phase.

If Indian papers are fully supportive of their government's position on Kashmir, including New Delhi's designs to commit aggression against Pakistan, why cannot Pakistani media match its efforts with their Indian counterparts, he asked.

At a news conference at his posh office here he also expressed his hope that the Opposition too will demonstrate its commitment to the Kashmir cause by joining the Kashmir Committee and official efforts to project the Kashmir issue both at home and abroad. He offered the Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to lead delegations, which go abroad from time to time to project the Kashmir cause.

Nawabzada also called for an OIC summit special meeting on Kashmir and Bosnia and cited the consistent support Pakistan has been given by the OIC in the past. He said he would be soon meeting President Leghari, Prime Minister Bhutto and the Foreign minister to make a formal request for the OIC special summit.

Without conceding failure of Pakistan's foreign policy in securing world support for a cause as just as Kashmiris' Nawabzada Nasrullah however, indicated that the Western countries are increasingly moving on to the Indian side. He cited the Indian minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement on the floor of Lok Sabha that G-7 countries in their recent meeting in Canada upheld bilateralism as the workable channel for solution of Kashmir issue.

He said in the past multilateral efforts succeeded in resolving disputes like the distribution of Indus water between Pakistan and India. "These champions of world peace," he hoped should realise that conflict in South Asia could lead to a global conflagration which will have its negative fallout on all.

Referring to the failure of the United Nations in Bosnia, Nasrullah said the world body, "in my opinion" has lost its credibility. He said withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces from the safe-haven city of Gorazde in Bosnia is the proof of the United Nations inability to act in support of peace, particularly when the Muslim community is under attack, be it in Bosnia or Kashmir.

On Indian designs to hold elections in the occupied Kashmir Nawabzada said having failed to hold polls in its held territory New Delhi is resorting to division of the Ladakh valley into separation of Kargil from Leh so that it can put up a show of elections in the non-Muslim majority area of Leh.

He decribed the hostage cirsis in held Kashmir is "stage-managed" by New Delhi with a view to undercut Pakistan's international goodwill particularly in the Scandinavian countries for two reasons one, there is growing support for the Kashmiris struggle in Sweden and Norway; two, to create bad blood for the Pakistani expatriates in these countries.

Quoting Indian deputy minister Rajesh Pilot's repeated threats of aggression against Pakistan the Kashmir Committee chairman said India has become "desperates" and may attack Pakistan. But New Delhi will receive "punitive retaliation", he said, borrowing the expression Foreign Minister Aseff Ahmad Ali used in reply to Prime Minister Rao's August 15 independence day speech.

He said Indian prime minister Narasimha Rao has already faced with provincial elections causing split in the Congress. Now the new threat that Rao has to countenance with is the Sonia's apparent move to the political arena. She is said to have held Rao guilty of the principles and ideology of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

Nasrullah expressed complete ignorance of as to who is the Al-Faran group that is now holding four western hostages. The fifth, a Norwegian national, it allegedly killed a few days back. The All Parties Hurriayat Conference, the umbrella body of the 30-odd Kashmir Mujahideen organisations, has also expressed its ignorance about the Al-Faran, he added. He also explained how JUI Amir Maulana Fazlur Rehman's scheduled visit to the Indian capital was exploited by New Delhi to malign Pakistan.

If Maulana Fazlur Rehman were really involved in the Al-Faran case the Indian authorities would have got in touch with him during his New Delhi sojourn, which they did not, he said, arguing that the entire Al-Faran drama has been staged to defame Pakistan. He also called incorrect the report that President Clinton contacted Benazir Bhutto and thus secured the lives of the remaining four hostages including an American.