India will be 'concerned' if U.S. supplies arms to Pak.: Mansingh

WASHINGTON, OCT. 12. India has said it would be a matter of concern to New Delhi if the United States extends assistance to Pakistan from economic aid to arms supply for using facilities provided by Islamabad in war against Afghanistan's Taliban regime and the terrorist mastermind, Osama bin Laden.

``India understands that in the present context the U.S. has to use the facilities Pakistan provides for the war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden but if the U.S. goes beyond economic aid to the supply of arms to Pakistan, India will be concerned because the only use Pakistan has made of American- supplied arms in the past is against India,'' the Indian Ambassador, Mr. Lalit Mansingh, said here on Thursday.

Stating that the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, assured the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, that war against terrorism included Kashmir, he said ``Mr. Bush does not distinguish between global terrorism and regional or local terrorism, and is determined to wipe out terrorism''.

``To Mr. Bush, there is no good terrorism and bad terrorism. Like India, Mr. Bush is against all terrorism,'' Mr. Mansingh said speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.

He said India and the U.S. stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the war against terrorism. ``Both our countries have a vital stake in defeating the forces of terror wherever they exist. What is at stake in this new war is more than our lands and our sovereignty. What we are defending are our principles.''

In the last 20 years, over 50,000 innocent Indian lives had been sacrificed to ``the monster of terrorism,'' Mr. Mansingh said, adding the terrorists' objective ``is simple and diabolical - to destroy our harmony and our way of life. But they have failed. And we will never allow them to succeed''.

Referring to the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu in December 1999, he said ``my Government had to make an agonisingly difficult decision. It was forced to release three terrorists from our prisons to secure the safety of hostages. Within days, the three released terrorists were in Pakistan. They received succour and support in that country. They were hailed as `freedom fighters.'''

Masood Azhar, one of the released militants, founded the Jaish-e- Mohammad militant outfit which claimed responsibility for the October 1 attack on Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in Srinagar in which nearly 40 people died.

``Other groups that regularly terrorise people of India like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Hizbul Mujahideen are all mutations of the Al-Qaeda,'' Mr. Mansingh said.

- PTI

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