April 17, 2002	Wednesday	Safar 3, 142

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LOS ANGELES, April 16: Pakistanis and Indians exchanged hot words at the University of California on Sunday in a conference on the Kashmir issue.

The conference on “Kashmir: ways to help resolve one of the world’s most dangerous conflicts,” was organized at the UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations.

They exchanged angry rhetoric, finger-pointing, yelling so much so that at one point cops and the university’s security personnel had to intervene.

Former UCLA assistant vice-chancellor, Prof Stanley Wolpert, moderated the conference.

“It shows that there are many people yearning for the settlement of Kashmir. This is another indication that they were interested in finding ways to resolve Kashmir dispute by having more of their viewpoints represented,” Wolpert told Dawn.

The most important element of the program was the consensus among the keynote speakers, Prof Wolpert and Burkle Center Director Prof Michael D. Intriligator to appoint former president of the US, Jimmy Carter, as the main mediator in the conflict.

“I think Jimmy Carter can do wonders in this region,” said Prof Intriligator in his closing remarks.

A resolution demanding Kashmir’s right of self-determination was read out.

The idea of mediation by Carter was presented by Lord Nazir Ahmed, member of Britain’s House of Lords, in the keynote speech.

However, several Indians walked out before Lord Ahmed’s speech due to his harsh remarks about the Indian army in the morning session.

Nazir Ahmed, when called to give his perspective at the end of the morning session, said that in the 50-year-old persecution of Israeli soldiers there had not been any incident of rape of Palestinian women. “While Indian army has raped thousands of our Kashmiri women,” he said as Pakistanis said “shame, shame” and India’s supporters jumped to near the podium, but the police and security personnel averted any physical contact.