LAHORE, June 6: Jamaat-i-Islami secretary-general Syed Munawwar Hasan has alleged that India is not serious in holding talks with Pakistan, notwithstanding Prime Minister Vajpayee’s statements to the contrary.

At a news conference here on Friday, he said misled by the deceptive signals from New Delhi, the Pakistan government seemed to be deviating from its principled stand on the Kashmir issue.

“Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri’s desire that the dispute be settled in a manner that neither Pakistan nor India look loser substantiated the assertion,” he argued.

The JI leader demanded that Pakistan should demand an end to atrocities being perpetrated in held Kashmir, withdrawal of Indian forces and a conducive atmosphere for talks between the two countries. In his opinion, the best and a just solution to the Kashmir dispute would be possible only with the enforcement of UN resolutions.

He said with the gestures that it was willing to hold talks with Pakistan, India had stepped up oppression in occupied Kashmir. Custodial killings had gone up and innocent Kashmiris appeared as if there was none to back their just cause.

The Pakistani rulers, according to him, were not lodging even protest at the killings. Instead, President Musharraf had said recently that any training camp in AJK would be removed.

He said instead of coming up with a positive response to such gestures, India had killed as many as 346 Kashmiris in one month. Another 350 people had been arrested and 516 tortured during the period. Some 7,550 Kashmiris were under detention at present. Three dozen people had been killed as a result of Indian firing in various areas of Azad Kashmir.

Emboldened by an increasingly soft Pakistani attitude, he said, Indian leaders had now started saying that they would start talks by demanding that Pakistan should vacate the part of Kashmir under its occupation. Its allegations that Pakistan was involved in cross-border terrorism were being incessantly repeated and the PML-Q government was not countering them.

Munawwar Hasan said the attitude of the Pakistan government was disappointing for the Kashmiri people who so far had sacrificed some 80,000 lives to get their right to self-determination.

He said he saw no possibility of resumption of talks between the two countries. However, he said, India was now trying to achieve some goals which it could not achieved even through a war. The JI secretary-general alleged that the government could not highlight the Kashmir issue from the platform of the United Nations despite the fact that Islamabad remained the Security Council’s president for one month.

He was critical of FBI’s unhindered activities in Pakistan and the cooperation being extended by the local agencies.

He said some people arrested on serious charges had proved their innocence in courts of law. Now, he said, the interior minister should be indicted for levelling baseless allegations against them.

The JI leader ridiculed finance minister’s claims about poverty alleviation, increase in per capita income and the rosy picture he painted for the future.