The Hindu : Pak. team was invited by pseudo-secularists: BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 16, 2003

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National

Pak. team was invited by pseudo-secularists: BJP

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI MAY 15. Those organisations and individuals who invited the Pakistani parliamentary goodwill delegation currently visiting India were today described by the Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, as "pseudo-secularists" but he would not apply the same epithet to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who had extended an invitation to Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, for summit talks in Agra less than two years ago not long after the Kargil episode.

Lashing out at some of the comments reportedly made by members of the Pakistani delegation, Mr. Naqvi described the organisers of the event as "pseudo-secularists". He took strong exception to suggestions reportedly made by some of the Pakistani MPs that terrorism could not be ended in Kashmir, nor in Chechnya.

"The situation in Chechnya cannot be compared to that in Kashmir," Mr. Naqvi said. "Through the elections in Kashmir the people had shown that they were not for the separatists and the terrorists."

Ever since the Prime Minister's Srinagar initiative offering a "hand of friendship" to Pakistan, the party representatives have been issuing negative statements about the prospects for peace. They have welcomed the Prime Minister's initiative and then strongly condemned cross-border terrorism and suggested that no talks or peace was possible without ending it.

Mr. Naqvi said today that "no positive outcome" was possible from any talks held in this atmosphere.

The party has not clearly said whether it is in favour of a dialogue with Pakistan even if terrorist activities do not come to a grinding halt or whether no dialogue is possible unless all terrorist activities stop and all terror camps are dismantled. Pressed whether the party would oppose talks without an end to cross-border terrorism and the dismantling if terrorist camps, he said the party would support "whatever initiatives were taken by the Government".

About the Jaish-e-Mohammed leader, Masood Azhar, being banned from entering Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Mr. Naqvi said: "They (the Pakistanis) are trying to establish that they are making efforts to curb terrorism and terrorists, but this cannot impress us, we have to see what happens on the ground." "What they have declared was `dikhawa' (just a show), but we have to see the `zamini sacchai' (reality on the ground)."

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