India asks Musharraf to be bold to fight terror

Pakistan calls for regional force to control militancy

14 September 2003, 18:00 PM

AFP, New Delhi

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, denounced by al-Qaeda as a "traitor", should be bold enough to join India as an ally against terrorism, India's foreign minister said at the weekend.

"By all means. I have no hesitation in saying that," Minister Yashwant Sinha told AFP in an interview.

"If Pakistan can cooperate with the United States with regard to fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, why can't Pakistan cooperate with India in fighting terrorism in India and specially in Jammu and Kashmir," he said.

"I can't understand what is holding (us) up. We are ready to cooperate with Pakistan in this fight, even with Musharraf," Sinha said, arguing that India was the first country to "lend legitimacy to general Musharraf" following his 1999 coup.

In an audiotape broadcast Wednesday by the al-Jazeera television network, al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, purportedly called on Islamists to rise up against "traitor Musharraf" for "selling Muslims' blood in Afghanistan" and handing over "the Arab Mujaheedin to crusader America".

"Not only this. He opened up nuclear installations to US inspection, choked off the jihad in Kashmir... and is (planning) to recognize Israel -- all for a handful of dollars the Americans stack in his pocket...," said Zawahiri.

"Act, O Muslims in Pakistan, before you wake up from your slumber to find Hindu soldiers raiding your homes in complicity with the Americans."

In the interview, Sinha deplored what he called "cross-border terrorism" in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, where Islamic rebels have been waging a 14-year insurgency that has so far claimed 38,000 lives. Separatists put the toll at between 80,000 and 100,000.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri Saturday called for the creation of a regional force to control Islamic militancy in disputed Kashmir state, divided between India and Pakistan.

"Pakistan is ready to maintain a peacekeeping force from the SAARC region in the disputed areas of Kashmir to curb and monitor cross-border terrorism," Kasuri told an interactive programme involving Nepalese businesspeople, industrialists, journalists and intellectuals.

The South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) formed in 1985 groups Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, India and Bhutan.