June 15, 2002	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 3, 1423

DHAKA, June 14: A group of “concerned citizens” of Bangladesh, in a joint statement, urged the world’s democratic governments and peoples to pressure Pakistan and India to redeem their pledges and allow the people of Kashmir to decide their fate under a UN-supervised plebiscite.

The statement, published in the weekly “Holiday”, was signed by 30 prominent poets, writers, lawyers, teachers, social activists and newsmen representing a cross-section of Bangladesh society.

They called upon the Indians to launch a movement to end the repression on the people of Kashmir and Pakistanis to mobilize public opinion against what they called “cross-border terrorism”.

Referring to the current tense Indo-Pakistan relations, they observed that the two countries “now stand on the brink of a war potentially thousand times more devastating than the earlier ones they had fought since 1948”.

They deplored that “being goaded by imperialism, particularly Anglo-US imperialism, both India and Pakistan are carrying their so-called campaign against terrorism to new heights, accusing each other of cross-border and internal terrorism, and in the name of fighting terrorism promoting a kind of state terrorism which continuously increases tension between them and worsens the communal situation.”