INDIA - Says U.S. and Pakistan are strange bedfellows

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Figured something like this was coming...

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/275/world/In_letter_to_Bush_Indian_leade:.shtml

In letter to Bush, Indian leader blames Pakistanis for deadly attack in Kashmir

By Qaiser Mirza, Associated Press, 10/2/2001 10:45

SRINAGAR, India (AP) India's leader wrote to President Bush on Tuesday blaming Pakistanis for a car bombing outside a legislature in Kashmir that killed 40, the worst terrorist attack in the disputed region in two years.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee suggested Pakistan which has allied itself with the United States in the campaign against accused terrorist Osama bin Laden is lying when it says there are no terrorist groups operating from its territory.

''There is a limit to the patience of the people of India,'' Vajpayee wrote.

Shortly after the suicide bombing Monday outside the state legislature in India's Jammu-Kashmir state, a Pakistan-based militant group fighting for the independence of Indian-held Kashmir claimed responsibility. The group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, named a Pakistani citizen as the driver of the car bomb, which also wounded 60 people.

''Ironically, it comes only a day after the Pakistan president announced on television that his country has no terrorist groups operating from its territory,'' Vajpayee told Bush. ''Incidents of this kind raise questions for our security, which ... I have to address in our supreme national interest.''

The text of the letter, which was released by India's two news agencies, contained no specific request for action from Bush.

Pakistan has promised to cooperate with Washington in military operations against bin Laden, who is the top suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks and is sheltered in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has moved to shut down some Islamic militant groups.

Pakistan is also the base for a number of guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory divided between Pakistan and India. India accuses Pakistan of giving military support to the groups, something Islamabad denies.

During a meeting with Bush in Washington on Monday, India's foreign minister Jaswant Singh raised India's concerns about links between groups in Kashmir and international terrorism, his junior minister, Omar Abdullah, said Tuesday.

Abdullah said India had provided ''irrefutable proof'' to the United States linking Kashmir militant groups with bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization.

Although Musharraf continues to call the rebels fighting in Kashmir freedom fighters, his government condemned Monday's car bombing, saying: ''It appears to be aimed at maligning the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people for their right to self-determination.''

The government's statement did not acknowledge the claim of responsibility by Jaish-e-Mohammed, headed by Masood Azhar, a former member of Harkat ul-Mujahideen, which was once affiliated with bin Laden. Jaish-e-Mohammed is not one of the groups Musharraf's government has moved to shut down.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed during the insurgency in Jammu-Kashmir, the only part of mostly Hindu India with a Muslim majority, since the fighting began there in 1989.

In Srinagar on Monday, the attackers, dressed in police uniforms, drove up to the gate of the legislative building in a car packed with explosives just after the lawmakers had finished a meeting in a nearby building and left the compound.

One militant died in the explosion and two others ran into the assembly building, firing guns and throwing grenades. Police and paramilitary troops fired grenades and artillery into the building, and a fire erupted.

Seven badly burned bodies were pulled from the debris Tuesday, said R.K. Jalla, the superintendent of police, and two people who were wounded died, raising the death toll to 40.

Most of the fatalities were pedestrians and people waiting in their cars, as police halted all traffic while the legislators departed. When traffic was allowed to move, the attackers drove forward and detonated their bomb.

The death toll was the highest in Jammu-Kashmir since 1999, when 35 Hindus and their Kashmiri guides were killed in a gunbattle between militants and security forces on a pilgrimage to a cave regarded by Hindus as holy.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2001


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