LAHORE, May 27: Speakers at a seminar have urged both Pakistan and India to desist from going to war and settle their disputes through a dialogue, besides withdrawing their troops from the border to defuse tension.

The seminar was held by the Joint Action Committee for People’s Rights at the Lahore Press Club here on Monday.

In her presidential address, HRCP former chairperson Asma Jahangir appealed to the heads of both the government to observe restraint. She was apprehensive of use of nuclear weapons in the war.

She said she would soon be leading a large rally to lodge the people’s protest and anger against the possible use of nuclear weapons.

She asked the army to go back to barracks and the ‘maulvis’ to mosques and leave the nation to live in peace. She said President Gen Musharraf had made solemn promise in his Jan 12 speech that he would not allow the ‘jehadi’ organizations to use the Pakistani territory against any other country but he failed to keep it as was evident from the recent Jammu incident. If he could not control the ‘jehadis’ he should have not made the promise in his speech. Thus he was providing an excuse to the international community to declare Pakistan a rogue state.

She said the general carried out the misadventure of Kargil without realizing its grave consequences for Pakistan. Now again the army was preparing itself for a war which would be so devastating that future generations would never forget it. It would shatter their economic future, she added.

“We shall have to put a stop to cross-border terrorism and discontinue the current missile tests,” Ms Asma said.

She said the double standards of Pakistan army had caused great threat to the security of South Asia and warned that India would exploit the situation while international forces would use it to destroy the Pakistan’s armed forces. Thus not only the armed forced but the people of Pakistan would be destroyed.

She also criticized the heavy expenditure incurred on defence of the country and said it should be curtailed.

She said unless the army went back to barracks there could be no friendship with the neighbours.

Criticizing her speech, Qaumi Jamhoor Party (QJP) leader Air Marshal Khurshid Mirza (retired) said no cross-border infiltration was taking place from Pakistan to India. Pakistan, he said, was itself a victim of terrorism and recently there had been a terrorist attack on a French team of experts in Karachi.

He questioned the veracity of the claim and said cross-border terrorism was not in Pakistan’s interest. It would never invite India to attack on Pakistan.

He said generals never wanted a war but it was being thrust on Pakistan as it was India which had brought its forces on borders.

He said nuclear weapons would not be used to kill the people but to prevent India from invading Pakistan and capturing its territory on the strength of its superiority in conventional weapons. The atomic bomb was a weapon of deterrence and defence.

He said Pakistan was not sending Mujahideen to India. Let the UN and international observers be posted along the LoC to see if any infiltration was taking place. He asked what 750,000 troops of India deployed along the LoC and inside the occupied Kashmir were doing if they could not check the so-called infiltration. India had never allowed the UN observers, even the teams of Red Cross and human rights experts like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and international media to visit the occupied Kashmir fearing exposure of its gross human rights violations and atrocities being perpetrated upon the people of Kashmir.

“Neither India nor Israel can suppress the freedom movements of the people of Kashmir and Palestine nor can they prevent them from offering sacrifices for their cause,” he declared.

The meeting was also addressed by ANP senior vice-president Ehsan Wyne, Labour Party leader Tariq Farooq, JKLF leader Sardar Anwar and journalist Imtiaz Alam.