31 July 2004	Saturday	13 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

KARACHI, July 30: President of the Jammu Kashmir National Awami Party on Friday deplored the killing of two Kashmiris in Iraq and demanded of the government of Pakistan to make a categorical pronouncement against sending troops to Iraq.

Addressing a news conference at the Karachi Press Club, Sardar Liaquat Hayat of the JKNAP maintained that Raja Azad and Sajid Naeem were killed by their abductors because the Pakistani government failed to make a statement about not sending troops to Iraq.

Sardar Liaquat Hayat pointed out that the Philippines had pulled out its troops from Iraq after one of its citizens was kidnapped. India had also made a similar categorical statement about not sending troops to Iraq, he added. But Pakistan on one hand kept on making dubious statements while at the same time was quietly preparing for dispatching troops to Iraq, he said.

He alleged that the two Kashmiris, who had gone there in search of jobs were killed because rulers here preferred to remain loyal to the Americans. He said that since they had no separate identity, and were carrying Pakistani passports, they (slain Kashmiris) paid with their life for the misguided policies of the Pakistani rulers.

He pointed out that poor Kashmiris had to travel to many countries in search of jobs because there were no industries or job opportunities in the AJK. The JKNAP chief referred to the ongoing struggle of the Kashmiri people for their rights and national identity, which he said could not succeed due to treachery of our own. Owing to that, the freedom struggle had been condemned as terrorism by the world community.

He was critical of the attempt by the world community to impose upon the Kashmiris its decision to turn the Line of Control into a permanent border. He claimed that this situation had arisen only because the ISI had injected foreign religious extremists into the Kashmiris' struggle for freedom.

He said that Kashmiris were carrying Pakistani passports as a compulsion, which he said was another symbol of subjugation. He demanded separate passports and national identity cards for the people of Azad Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. He said that "since long" the JKNAP had been demanding that we don't want passports with a Pakistani flag on it.

"If our words are not given due consideration, and we are made to receive dead bodies of our fellow Kashmiris, then a time will come when Kashmiris will force the so-called rulers to flee from Pakistan through river Jhelum."

Sardar Liaquat Hayat, who was flanked by provincial leaders of the party also appealed to the Amnesty International and other world bodies to arrange for the dispatching of the corpses of Raja Azad and Sajid Naeem to their relatives in Pakistan. He also appealed to the Kashmiris living in Karachi to offer ghaibana namaz-i-janaza of the two in Jehangir park on Sunday afternoon.