J&K outfits not in U.S. terrorists list

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, OCT. 5. The U.S. State Department has failed to include any of the terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir in its list of foreign terrorist organisations released here today.

In fact the Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, said in a statement that he was not redesignating the Japanese Red Army and Peru's Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in the 2001 list.

There are 28 foreign terrorist organisations in the latest list. The prominent inclusions are the network headed by Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda and several other Palestinian groups including the Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The list which is Congressionally mandated and revised every two years, remains virtually the same as that of 1999. Terror outfits relevant to South Asia and India which remain designated are the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

There was the hope in some quarters that as part of tightening the noose on terrorism, the Bush administration would take into account some of the Pakistan-backed terror networks operating in Jammu and Kashmir such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e- Mohammad.

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