LAHORE, March 31: India has failed to suppress the will and urge of the Kashmiris for freedom, says a Washington-based journalist who visited the occupied valley recently. ?The people of Kashmir have got disillusioned with the policies of the Pakistan government after the peace process started last year. But they are not disillusioned with Pakistan,? said Mr Khalid Hassan.

Speaking at a meeting at the Nazaria-i-Pakistan Foundation auditorium on Thursday, where he was invited to record his impressions about his visit, Hassan said while Pakistan had shown maximum flexibility in its principled stand on Kashmir, India had not budged an inch from its stand of Kashmir as its atoot ang. This had caused great frustration among the Kashmiris; most of them had started thinking in terms of independent Kashmir.

?If Pakistan does not want to help us, it should not betray us and tell us categorically that it is helpless,? was the comment of the senior Kashmiri leaders whom he had met during his tour, he added.

Mr Hasan recalled the resolution of an international conference on Kashmir held in New York recently, which, he said, had made no reference whatsoever to the UN resolutions or the Kashmiris? right to self-determination. When a delegate pointed out this lapse the organizers of the conference overruled the objection.

India, he added, had deployed bulk of its troops in the interior of the valley where they were committing atrocities upon the innocent people and unlike in urban areas their excesses were not reported to the press.

In Srinagar and other towns army had been reduced. Srinagar, which was called the paradise on earth, had become a ghost city, devastated with its burnt houses, shops and broken roads and streets. Gloom hung heavily over the city.