July 29, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 28, 1424

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ISLAMABAD July 28: President of Millat Party and parliamentary leader of the National Alliance, Sardar Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari, has asked the government to refuse to accept the $3 billion US aid package if it was being offered with conditionalities.

He took strong exception to attempts by what he called the anti-Pakistan lobbies in the US to introduce a bill attaching ‘unacceptable’ strings to the aid package announced by President Bush at the Camp David.

He said the aid package had carried no strings when President Bush announced it in the presence of President Gen Musharraf at their meeting in Camp David.

Speaking at a news conference here on Monday, the former president said vital national interests of Pakistan would be undermined if the said bill was not blocked by the US administration.

He asked the government to counter the anti-Pakistan lobby’s attempt of putting conditionalities through quiet diplomacy and use all channels to thwart the introduction of the most damaging bill.

He pointed out that through the said bill, among other things, the US legislators appear to have accepted Indian-held Kashmir as part of India while Azad Jammu and Kashmir had been described in the bill as Pakistani-held Kashmir.

The proposed bill says that Pakistan will “ensure that all ‘known terrorist camps’ operating in Pakistani-held Kashmir were closed, no Islamic extremist crossed the Line of Control and weapons of mass destruction were not transferred to third countries or terrorist organizations including associated technologies.”

These conditionalities, he said, were a slap in the face of Pakistani nation which must be rejected by all political parties, including the opposition parties.

He described the conditionalities as the success of anti-Pakistan lobbies working in the US but at the same time he refused to regard it as a failure of President Gen Musharraf or that of the Pakistani mission in the United States.

He described the attitude of the American administration as strange, “as on the one hand it appreciates Pakistan’s joining the international coalition against terrorism, on the other it is keeping silent over such an anti-Pakistan bill being introduced in the House of Representatives.”

He rejected the allegations that Pakistan was in any way involved in sponsoring militancy inside occupied Kashmir which he said was 95 indigenous which was evident from the fact that India was forced to maintain 700,000 troops in one fifth area of Vietnam where 750,000 US troops had failed to break the will of the people.

He also strongly rejected the allegations that Pakistan was involved in transferring its strategic weapons or technology to any country or organization.