The Hindu : Musharraf has misused NAM, says Sinha

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 25, 2003

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International

Musharraf has misused NAM, says Sinha

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

KUALA LUMPUR FEB. 24. The External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, today said that the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, was trying to introduce "new concepts'' such as conflict resolution into the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

Speaking to presspersons, Mr. Sinha said NAM had functioned all these years on the basis that conflict resolution was not an issue. The Minister said there had been no discussion within NAM for the "role'' suggested by Gen. Musharraf.

Without the achievement of consensus, Mr. Sinha said the Pakistan President had even offered to host the NAM "mechanism'' for conflict resolution. There is little doubt that when Gen. Musharraf speaks of conflict resolution he has Jammu and Kashmir in mind.

Mr. Sinha said the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, was constrained to respond to the points made by Gen. Musharraf in his speech. "In no international conference would we like to go down to the level of Pakistan,'' he said, adding that Gen. Musharraf had misused the NAM forum. India, he said, wanted a dialogue with Pakistan, but Islamabad kept raising contentious issues at multilateral forums. Mr. Sinha said that people living in the Northern Territories occupied by Pakistan were controlled by an Under Secretary sitting in Islamabad and had no democratic rights. Separately, the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal, said that Gen. Musharraf's address today was predictable. Once again, Mr. Sibal said the Pakistani leader had demonstrated his compulsive hostility towards India.

Pakistan, he said, had brutalised people living in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and had violated all its agreements with India — whether it was the Shimla Agreement or the Lahore resolutions. The General was the one who had planned and plotted the Kargil operation and then staged a coup d'etat in his country.

The ill-treatment of women and Muslim minorities in Pakistan was a demonstration of its "schizophrenic attitude," he said.

According to Mr. Sibal, Pakistan was a haven for the Al-Qaeda and was a problem nation for the international community. Every major terrorist incident had the hand of Pakistan, the Foreign Secretary alleged.

He said Pakistan, which had a history of being part of one military bloc or the other, never had any serious commitment to NAM. Islamabad wanted to "devalue'' it. Islamabad, he added, had always been short on vision and long on venom.

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