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Friday, Apr 01, 2005

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"Ensure security for Muzaffarabad bus users"

By Amit Baruah

NEW DELHI, MARCH. 31. India and Pakistan should take coordinated steps to ensure the safety and security of passengers using the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service in view of the threats made by extremists, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, said today.

Talking to journalists, Mr. Hussain pointed to the threats that had been hurled by extremist elements against the bus service, which is scheduled to begin on April 7. Efforts would be made to "sabotage" the cross-Line of Control bus link, he said.

Reiterating his call for taking "bold and unpopular" decisions, Mr. Hussain said the issue of Jammu & Kashmir should be addressed along with other problems being discussed by India and Pakistan.

Speaking after his meetings with senior Kashmiri leaders, including the pro-merger-with-Pakistan, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the PML chief said that no one should think that Pakistan had made a "U-turn" on Kashmir.

"We can't say we can go in for the United Nations' resolutions [on Kashmir]," he said and added that these resolutions had been in existence for the past 50 years. In the prevailing circumstances, Mr. Hussain felt that "old things needed to be buried".

Pointing out that both India and Pakistan were nuclear powers, he said the events of Iraq had shown that the United States had failed to change the situation by the use of force. If a superpower could not do this, how could Pakistan and India?

The Chaudhry said India was a "big country," but no one should say that we are "big" or "small" to resolve existing disputes. Mr. Hussain also conceded that the U.S. was mounting pressure on Pakistan over the A.Q. Khan "proliferation" affair.

The PML secretary-general, Mushahid Hussain, told presspersons that "after 1998," war was not an option between India and Pakistan. According to him, there had been a "mindset" change in Pakistan and there was "no political constituency" that spoke of confrontation with India.

Normalising ties

According to him, the Pakistani military establishment, too, was speaking of normalising relations with India. Mr. Hussain, who was Information Minister in the Nawaz Sharif Government, claimed that Pakistan now felt that the "main threat" came from within — from extremist elements — and not from outside.

He said there had been a change in how India looked at a military man holding the reins of Pakistan. India felt comfortable in dealing with the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, despite the fact that he was in uniform.

Nisar Memon, also a former Information Minister, however, felt differently and said that Pakistanis could not forget that India had a hand in the "dismemberment" of Pakistan. Joining issue with his colleague, Mr. Memon said there remained an "external threat" from Pakistan.

Mr. Hussain, when asked what "other steps" could be taken on Kashmir, said despite the warmth between India and Pakistan, human rights violations continued "unabated" in the valley. Indians, he said, should ponder over this and make efforts to ameliorate the problems faced by the Kashmiri people.

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