LAHORE, Jan 9: The Pakistan India Peace Initiatives on Wednesday urged India to give a positive response to the peace efforts and steps by Pakistan and play its role in removing the war threats.

Speaking at a news conference Justice Nasim Hasan Shah (retired) and association chairperson Owais Sheikh supported President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s initiative against terrorism and religious extremism, urging him to crackdown on Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad. He must also ban the extremist religious parties which had been involved in sectarianism and terrorism, they demanded.

They said they had contacted various peace organizations in Pakistan and India and it had been decided to start a signature campaign from Lahore and New Delhi from Thursday, seeking people’s opinion about the peaceful resolution of all differences between the two countries.

They said copies of the signed papers would be exchanged at Wagah border and sent to the leaders of both the countries.

Earlier, they urged both the countries to sign a no-war pact, withdraw their troops from the border and promote bilateral trade, exchange newspapers and take other measures to build confidence. India was urged to withdraw its forces from the occupied Kashmir and stop violating human rights there.

They said solid steps should be taken to resolve the core issue of Kashmir. Both the countries should constitute a working group having the mandate of meeting every three months and suggesting governments of both the countries on how to resolve their disputes. All peace workers should be given representation in the group, they said.

They demanded India to immediately resume road and rail links and said the organization was organizing an orientation camp in Lahore in March, inviting 200 people from India to attend it.

They expressed their serious concern over the situation on borders and said this was posing a great threat to peace in South Asia. The present situation was pushing the peoples of both the countries towards more problems. War would give nothing but total destruction to the region, they said.