April 16, 2002	Tuesday	Safar 2, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, April 15: President Pervez Musharraf was delivered a message of US President George W. Bush concerning Pakistan-India situation, Afghanistan scenario and Pakistan-US cooperation in combating terrorism, by US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Christina Rocca, during her short visit to Islamabad.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Aziz Khan said at his weekly news briefing here on Monday that Ms Rocca had a short break last week from her scheduled stay and meetings in New Delhi, because of a bomb attack on a church in the diplomatic enclave here in mid-March, killing, among others, an American diplomat’s wife and a child with whose bodies she flew to the United States.

On being quizzed about Islamabad’s present policy towards bilateral relations with New Delhi, the spokesman reiterated Pakistan’s desire to hold “comprehensive dialogue” with India, covering all issues, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir.

“India would find Pakistan ready for a comprehensive dialogue any time, anywhere,” Mr Aziz Khan added.

The spokesman, however, referred to a strong Pakistan’s denunciation in a statement issued here on Sunday of the brutal attacks on the Indian Muslim minority people in the Indian state of Gujarat by violent mobs of Hindu fanatics who received government support in carrying out the most inhuman assault on Muslims.

The statement specially directed its ire against Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for reportedly describing Muslims as “intolerant” and “violent” at a public meeting on April 12 and asserted: “It is strange that Mr Vajpayee, a life-long member of the Hindu reactionary and fundamentalist party, should choose to call Muslims intolerant.”

The Indian PM betrayed his bias and attempted to divert international attention from the recent massacre in Gujarat, ignoring that he himself had been a leader of the RSS composed of the Hindu fanatics and fascists of the VHP, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, who enacted macabre anti-Muslim violence, said the statement. The FO spokesman, replying to another question, said that Pakistan did not require any foreign assistance in conducting its own operation to apprehend terrorists from Afghanistan who might try to sneak into its territory.

He said that Islamabad’s cooperation in combating terrorism and apprehending the wanted criminals had been acknowledged at the highest level in the US. He asserted that Pakistan had no knowledge about presence of Osama bin Laden in its territory, as reported by some foreign media organs.

He said that Afhanistan’s ex-monarch Zahir Shah, while returning to Kabul, had no schedule to visit Islamabad.