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| Monday, 20 October 2003 |
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New chapter in ties if Pakistan hands over India's 20 most wanted: Advani NEW DELHI, Sunday (AFP) Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani Saturday said India and Pakistan could open a new chapter in bilateral ties if Islamabad handed over 20 criminals New Delhi says are sheltered there. "A new chapter can be opened in India-Pakistan relations if Islamabad hands over Dawood Ibrahim and the other 19 terrorists whose list has been given to Pakistan last year," the Press Trust of India quoted Advani as saying at a meeting in New Delhi. Buoyed by the US Treasury Department branding India's most wanted criminal Dawood Ibrahim a "specially designated global terrorist" on Thursday, Advani asked Pakistan to hand over the 20 alleged criminals. However, Pakistan's foreign ministry repeated its denial that any Indian suspects were sheltering in the country. "There are no Indian suspects on our soil. We have not given shelter to any Indian national, one or 19 or 20," foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan told AFP. Khan said India had so far provided no evidence about presence of Indian suspects in Pakistan, and that bilateral ties "cannot be improved on the basis of a wrong presumption." The spokesman said US information linking Ibrahim to a Pakistani passport and telephone number was incorrect. "Fresh inquiries were conducted which have revealed that a Pakistani passport. given by the US government to be allegedly in possession of Dawood Ibrahim, in fact belongs to one Imtiaz Hussain," he said. India made its demand for Pakistan to hand over the 20, including Ibrahim, in December 2001 days after Islamic rebels in Kashmir launched an attack on the national parliament complex. Ibrahim - widely known in South Asia simply as Dawood - is wanted in India on charges of masterminding serial bombings in Bombay that killed almost 300 people and left around 1,000 injured a decade ago. The list includes another underworld leader, Mohammad Shafi Memon, as well as Maulana Masood Azhar and Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founders respectively of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba - blamed by India for the parliament assault.Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has ruled out extraditing any nationals on the list. Meanwhile Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee reiterated a rejection of the demand for self-determination in Kashmir. He said parts of Kashmir were occupied by Pakistan and that New Delhi would seek Islamabad's vacation of the areas whenever the subject was discussed. "We do not want anybody's land but we will not part with even an inch of ours," he said. The Pakistani spokesman criticised Vapayee's remarks. "It is not a territorial dispute per se. The dispute is about the political future of 13 million people living in Jammu and Kashmir and its resolution in accordance with their aspirations," Khan said. More than 39,500 people have died in Indian Kashmir since the eruption of an anti-India insurgency in 1989, according to official figures. Separatists put the toll at between 80,000 and 100,000. |
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