ISTANBUL, Oct 14: Pakistan will not launch a war over the Kashmir dispute, President Pervez Musharraf told fellow leaders at the 10-member Economic Cooperation Organization on Monday.

Pakistan won’t be the one to start a war over the Kashmir region, Anatolia news agency quoted the president as saying at the seventh summit of ECO’s heads of state.

“But if they start a war, we will defend ourselves vigorously and with determination,” he added.

He invited the leaders’ attention towards deployment of troops by India along its border with Pakistan.

The president called for greater cooperation among the ECO countries to face challenges posed by globalization and for efficient utilization of resources and improved production.

“We must work to ensure that our peoples share the benefits of globalization and avoid its adverse effects. Collectively, we must develop a more effective voice in international economic forums and coordinate our positions in the UN system.”

The president said that ECO must become a vehicle for the integration of its member states with the global economy and a leader in the developing world in focusing on empowering women. “We must ensure that women enter the mainstream of economic development activities as well as in the political domain.”

He said they were making a conscious and concerted efforts to enhance the role of women in Pakistan’s political, social and economic activities as well as in parliament.

He said that the increase in the number of reserved seats for women to 60 in Pakistan’s National Assembly was a major step in that direction. The summit should decide to work for the full participation of women in the economic development of the region. The Istanbul Summit should be remembered as the one dedicated to the goal of advancement of women, he suggested.

Referring to Afghanistan, the president said that Pakistan supported the establishment of durable peace and the reconstruction and rehabilitation of that country. ECO should join hands to help Afghanistan in this regard.

Speaking about the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, he said these were a stark manifestation of the threat that terrorism posed to societies. Pakistan joined the international coalition against terrorism in line with the country’s principled stand of opposing terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

He said Pakistan was, however, convinced that the international community’s battle against terrorism must also address the root causes that drove people to desperation and violence. The difference between the genuine struggle of people for self-determination and acts perpetrated by terrorists must be underscored. The world must also condemn state terrorism carried out against people under foreign occupation, he added.

The president said that India was attempting to exploit the international campaign against terrorism to undermine the freedom struggle of the people of occupied Kashmir and to step up the use of brute force with an aim to silencing the voice of Kashmiris.

He said that 700,000-strong Indian troops forces, stationed in occupied Kashmir, had used terror as a weapon and killed 80,000 innocent Kashmiri men and women over the last decade alone in an attempt to destroy their will and to maintain the illegal occupation.

He said there could hardly be a more glaring example of the state terrorism than Indian brutality in occupied Kashmir.

Referring to elections in occupied Kashmir, he said that Indian game plan was to justify and legitimize its occupation by claiming that the Kashmiris had spoken through these elections.

However, he pointed out, these elections were boycotted by the Kashmiri people. Despite the coercion employed by the Indian army, the turnout at the elections was abysmally low.

Such sham elections can never substitute a fair and impartial plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of the Kashmiri people as decreed by the United Nations Security Council, the president said.

Speaking about the border tensions between Pakistan and India, Gen Musharraf urged Delhi to withdraw troops to peace-time locations and return to the path of negotiations.

Turning to the ECO summit which coincides with the 10th anniversary of the expansion of the organization, the president said that ECO was the result of a vision of economic cooperation the benefits of which would reach to all peoples in the region.

He mentioned the finalization of the ECO Trade Agreement, ratification by all states of the Transit Transport Framework Agreement, completion of road and train links, the early establishment of the ECO Trade and Development Bank and ECO Reinsurance Company and said that these were some of the areas which needed urgent attention.

Lauding the establishment of the ECO Cultural Institute, the president underlined the need for launching the ECO Science Foundation and the ECO Educational Institute. He condemned the aggression against Azerbaijan in Nagorno- Karabakh and called for the immediate vacation of Azeri territory occupied through aggression. He said Pakistan supported Turkish people of Northern Cyprus in their determination to secure and protect their fundamental and inalienable rights.—Agencies