NEW DELHI, April 18: India accused Pakistan on Thursday of playing to the galleries with its propagandist rhetoric and not doing anything to ease its alleged hostility against New Delhi, for instance along the sector in Kashmir’s Akhnoor region of their boundary where Islamabad opposes a fence being built by Indian troops.
“Pakistan’s negative and hostile approach towards India remains completely unchanged,” External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said in reply to a written question in Rajya Sabha even as the house remained paralysed for a fourth day. Both houses of parliament have not been able to function with the opposition demanding a vote on a proposed censure motion over Gujarat and the government declining the bid.
Singh termed as “propagandist rhetoric” Pakistan’s frequent appeals to break barriers and resume the peace process saying Islamabad is unwilling to take effective and irreversible steps to end sponsorship of cross-border terrorism against India.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesperson referring to an apparent Pakistani armed activity in the Akhnoor region said: “This morning there were some explosive devices detonated in the Raghubir Singh Pura area of Jammu, where work is in hand for erecting a fence on the Indian side of the international border.”
Islamabad opposes the fence on the grounds that it violates the Karachi agreement between the two sides which regards the stretch in question as a working boundary, Pakistani officials say.
The Indian spokesperson said: “Clearly, this is yet another attempt by Pakistan to disrupt this fencing work, which is an effective mechanism against cross-border infiltration of terrorists, smugglers and other illegal entrants. This effort of the military regime in Pakistan to raise concern and retard the fencing work will fail just as surely as other such efforts have failed in the past.”
The spokesperson added that the Government of India remains determined to take necessary action to put an end to such interference. “Pakistan would do well to learn from past failures,” she said.
Singh, rejecting President Pervez Musharraf’s remarks at a public address in February that “the Indian position that Kashmir is an integral part of India is untenable and, therefore, unacceptable,” Singh said “the State of Jammu and Kashmir is, and will remain, an integral part of India”.
Singh claimed that a part of the territory of the state was under the forcible and illegal occupation of Pakistan, and stressed that New Delhi had “firmly resolved to take all necessary steps to preserve the security and territorial integrity of the country”.
Seeking to respond to a written query if Pakistan had appealed to India to resume flight operation, the Samjhauta Express and the peace process and reduce army build-up at the borders, Singh said: “Pakistani leaders have frequently resorted to propagandist rhetoric and empty public relation gimmicks of this nature, in their futile bid to deflect international focus from Pakistan’s ongoing sponsorship of cross-border terrorism in India”.
He said it was quite evident that despite its positive assurances to the international community to end the use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy, Pakistan was unwilling to take steps to end terrorism against India.
Far from pulling back troops from the border, India appears to be planning to relieve the troops pulled out from the frontlines to do duty in Gujarat, to send them back to the border.
Defence Minister George Fernandes is beginning a four-day “healing mission” in Gujarat, beginning on Thursday, and would review as to how long the army’s presence was required in the violence-wracked state.
