October 13, 2001	Saturday	Rajab 25, 1422

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MUZAFFARABAD, Oct 12: Kashmir’s dominant freedom fighter group, Hizbul Mujahideen, on Friday vowed to accelerate its operations against the Indian occupation forces, as Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said his government was considering intensifying its offensive in occupied territory.

While talking to reporters here, the spokesman for the group, Salim Hashmi, said if New Delhi thought it could derive any benefit from the US-led attacks on Afghanistan to bring the situation in occupied Kashmir under its control, it was her “wishful thinking.”

He pointed out that India had deployed more than 750,000 troops in occupied Kashmir, who had unleashed worst terrorism on the Kashmiris. But nevertheless, he said, New Delhi had failed to crush the will of the struggling Kashmiris. “What more than it India could do to fulfil its designs to rein in the freedom-seeking people?”

He said if the Indian leaders were thinking they could win over the sympathies of the US and other Western countries by falsely dubbing our freedom struggle as terrorism, that too was nothing but a vain hope on their part.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told reporters in Varanasi on Thursday that his government might step up military strikes in occupied Kashmir, but gave no details on plans to expand strikes.

But Salim Hashmi said such utterances on the part of Indian leaders reflected their failure and sheer frustration, and expressed belief that New Delhi could not achieve any success against the Mujahideen even after stepping up the military strikes.

“We have been facing military strikes ever since we launched the freedom struggle. But we have proved in the past and we will prove in future as well that we have an edge over the demoralized Indian army,” he said.

The Hizbul Mujahideen group carried out a string of landmine explosions in occupied Jammu in the recent past, killing and injuring several Indian soldiers.

Hashmi said the Mujahideen groups enjoyed public support in Kashmir, which was the base of their successful actions, on the contrary Indian troops were a symbol of hatred in the occupied territory.

“Given the situation on the ground, it will always be a distant dream for India to scale down the activities of the Mujahideen groups by stepping up military strikes,” he said, adding that the “honourable option for India was to accept the “writing on the wall” and let the Kashmiris decide their future with their free will, in accordance with the UN resolutions.