The Hindu : Pak. spreading terrorist activity, says Advani

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 02, 2003

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Pak. spreading terrorist activity, says Advani

By P. S. Suryanarayana

BANGKOK Feb. 1. Making out a new case against Pakistan on the suspected global reach of its "terrorist-promoting activities", India today expressed "disappointment" over the perceived U.S. "approach" of continuing to regard Islamabad as an anti-terror ally.

However, the visiting Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, L.K. Advani, who outlined India's new concerns at a press conference here, said he had "nothing specific to say" whether Pakistan had spread its wings to South East Asia too.

Placing India firmly in the camp of war-sceptics regarding the Iraq crisis, he said Baghdad "must give up (its) weapons of mass destruction" in compliance with the relevant United Nations resolutions.

However, "a war should be avoided" even if Iraq failed to disarm, he said, stressing that India did not favour any State acting unilaterally to force Baghdad to abide by the U.N. resolutions.

Answering questions from the international media at the conclusion of his talks with Thailand leaders, Mr. Advani said: "We have seen Pakistan trying to maximise the spread of its terrorist-promoting activity and, in that effort, they (the Pakistanis) may be attempting (to do so) everywhere. But I have nothing specific to say in this regard" insofar as South East Asia as a possible theatre for such operations was concerned. Nor did he cite the reports of Pakistan's support for North Korea's nuclear-weapons programme.

About Pakistan's anti-terror profile, Mr. Advani said that India, while being "disappointed with (the U.S.) approach", recognised that "every country has its own foreign policy considerations".

Given the strategic aspects of realpolitik on the global stage at present, New Delhi would "not expect any country of the world to help" it in the battle against Pakistan's sponsorship of "cross-border terrorism". "We are determined to deal with it on our own."

`Talks pointless'

Ruling out any possibility of renewing talks with Pakistan, Mr. Advani said the "touchstone" was that it would be "pointless and purposeless ... unless (all the) dimensions of (Pakistan's) infrastructure (of terrorism) are dismantled".

These "dimensions" were Pakistan's "terrorist camps" as also its suspected actions of providing "arms, finances and asylum" to terrorists on a sustainable basis.

He clarified that Pakistan was not discussed at any great length during his talks with the Thai leaders, though he himself had briefed them about India's perceptions. However, views on the overall terrorism-quotient of international politics were exchanged. It was in this context that India and Thailand had now agreed to put their Joint Working Group on Security into stride as early as possible. The perceived delay in signing a bilateral extradition treaty was traceable entirely to Thailand's compulsions of having to update its relevant domestic laws which were 75-year-old.

Mr. Advani said his visit to Thailand and Singapore should be seen in the evolving context of New Delhi's efforts to sensitise the international community to the general and specific aspects of security and terrorism as seen from India's standpoint.

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