MUMBAI, Jan 19: The India-Pakistan peace initiative has been supported by the fourth meeting of the World Parliamentary Forum which has over the last two days also deliberated upon the negative impact of globalization and maintained that the US unilateralism has obstructed the process of political settlements in the world.

"We recognize the striving of the people of South Asia to end regional conflicts and establish peace through a process of constructive dialogue to resolve disputes and strengthen regional co-operation," says the final declaration of the meeting issued at the end of extensive deliberations here on Monday.

Delegates from across the world, including some from Pakistan, hoped the peace process, which started as a result of the bilateral meeting between President General Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in Islamabad, would lead to durable peace in the region.

Conference sources said the parliamentarians hoped that both countries would continue the process on the basis of reciprocity. Delegates from India and Pakistan reiterated their desire for peace and called for mounting public pressure for achieving that objective.

The participants also insisted on restructuring of the international security system and the United Nations, expressed concerns over the arms race, impact of globalization and the WTO, and maintained that external debts prevented local economic development.

The two-day conference, which discussed issues of world peace and economic development in the context of South Asia, recognized the importance of forging unity among people against the corporate project of globalization spearheaded by the IMF-WB-WTO triumvirate. To achieve this, such forces, the declaration said, "play up differences based on ethnicity, race, religion and historical feudal legacies".

It supported demands of ethnic and religious minorities for a just and equal social order which would enable their participation as partners and not adversaries. It also called for strengthening women's movements against gender discrimination.

The conference was also critical of what it called "US unilateralism" and decided to initiate worldwide mobilization on March 20 against war and the Bush doctrine. It expressed solidarity with the people taking part in self-determination movements like that of the Palestinians, and called for focusing on zones of conflicts such as Iraq, Palestine-Israel, Pakistan-India, Mindanao and the Korean peninsula). It also supported the demand for a universal ban on nuclear weapons.

The parliamentarians were of the view that the war led by the Bush administration in Iraq was one of the most ominous developments in the international political system and had "worsened the dynamics of war threatening today's world, creating new obstacles to reaching necessary political settlements in many regions".

It maintained that the US unilateralism had exacerbated the arms race and nuclear proliferation. "We reject the attempts of the US to undermine legitimate international political process, specially the United Nations... The US government is freeing itself from international and common laws, as is especially shown in the scandalous case of Guantanamo," it said, holding multinationals responsible for many of the violent conflicts across the world.