ISLAMABAD, Jan 27: The World Punjabi Congress (WPC) on Thursday announced plans to hold an international conference in Lahore on April 17-20 and use this feast of the language it seeks to promote to help peace with neighbouring India.
WPC Chairman Fakhar Zaman told a news conference here that President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would be invited to the international Punjabi conference on peace, culture and literature that he said would be attended by about 400 delegates from 70 countries.
There will be some 140 delegates from India what will be the 12th in a series of international Punjabi conferences staged by the WPC in 18 years of its existence and will include luminaries from politics, literature, culture and media, he said.
Among them would be former prime minister I.K. Gujral, 15 members of parliament, about 20 central and state ministers, and some famous Bollywood celebrities such as Sunil Dutt, Vinod Khanna, Kamni Koshal and Prem Chopra. Cultural programmes would also be organized at Lahore's Al-Hamra Art Centre during the conference.
Mr Zaman said 11 international Punjabi conferences organized by the WPC so far in Pakistan, India and some other countries had played a historical role in promoting India-Pakistan and "Punjab- Punjab" interaction some of whose manifestations were recent visits by Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi to Indian Punjab and by the chief ministers of Indian Punjab and Haryana states to Pakistani Punjab.
He said the present dialogue process between the two countries had proved that the advocates of India-Pakistan peace were right and the "monopolists of the so-called ideology of Pakistan" who opposed such moves were wrong. "We think after 18 years we are vindicated."
NO GREATER PUNJAB IDEA: Mr Zaman dismissed the talk of so- called "greater Punjab" idea being behind recent high-level contacts between the Pakistani and Indian Punjabs and called the term as "figment of the imagination of those who are against the Punjabi language. They are fit to be placed in a museum."
He said the division of the Punjab as part of the partition of the South Asian sub-continent in 1947 "can never be undone" and that his organization only wanted good relations between the two Punjabs. "We don't want any confrontation ... as advocated by mullahs and jihadis."
The WPC chief said Pakistan and India must immediately open trade between them and the planned bus service between Azad Kashmir capital Muzaffarabad and the Indian-held Kashmir summer capital Srinagar.
Mr Zaman said interaction between the two parts of Punjab was also opposed by those who were involved in what he estimated to be $4 billion worth trade of some 6,000 items from India to Pakistan via Dubai. These people will stand to lose if the Wagah border is opened for trade between the two countries, he said.
URDU CONFERENCE: Mr Zaman had a dig at reported plans to organize an Urdu conference in Islamabad and said he had heard "disturbing" reports that some federal institutions like the Capital Development Authority were being used to organize the event on March 8-9 as a reaction to "what the World Punjabi Congress has done".
"This is a federal territory, and if an Urdu conference is held here (with official patronage) then Punjabi, Baloch, Sindhi and Pashtu conferences should also be held...," he said.
He also demanded the establishment of federal Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtu and Balochi universities on the pattern of the federal Urdu university and declaration of Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtu and Balochi as national languages, just like Urdu, rather than regional languages.
SOLIDARITY WITH BALOCHISTAN: Mr Zaman also used the occasion to assure "fraternity and solidarity" with the people of Balochistan and said problems in the troubled province should be solved by political dialogue rather than military force.
"People of the Punjab are with the people of Balochistan... and are against any moves to deprive them of their rights by any agency, whether it is the federal government, military or the Baloch waderas," he said.
