Pakistan calls for dialogue amid India tensions
PAKISTAN: Pakistan’s leader has pleaded for dialogue, not war, to
fight terrorism in South Asia but told India not to push Islamabad too
hard for action against extremists one month after the Mumbai attacks.
In an emotional speech delivered Saturday on the first anniversary of
the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, President Asif Ali
Zardari said Pakistan would fight the “cancer” of extremism.
Zardari’s comments came as the United States, Russia and other
nations tried to defuse tensions between Pakistan and India, which
quickly escalated on Friday after officials here announced that troops
had been moved to the border.
India has blamed the Mumbai attacks, which left 172 dead, on the
banned Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and accused
Islamabad of not doing enough to clamp down on it, something Zardari
firmly rejected.
“Dialogue is our biggest arsenal,” he told dignitaries gathered at
the Bhutto family home to honour the slain opposition leader, who was
killed on December 27 last year in a gun and suicide attack.
“We have non-state actors. Yes, they are forcing an agenda on us,”
the Pakistani leader said.
But on the subject of future action against such movements, he said
in a direct remark to India: “We shall do it because we need it, not
because you want it.”
“This mettle has been tested many times. Please do not test it
again... Allow us the freedom of democracy, allow us the freedom of
choice,” he said.
He welcomed US president-elect Barack Obama’s plans for fighting
terror in South Asia what he dubbed a “regional cure for this cancer”and
said Islamabad was ready to play its part.
“We will cure it, we will solve it, we will correct it,” Zardari
said.
But he rejected the notion that conflict between the nuclear-armed
neighbours could solve anything, saying:
“We have lost our people we do not talk about war, we do not talk
about vengeance.”
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from
Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Kashmir region.
They came to the brink of a fourth war in late 2001 after an attack
on India’s parliament which New Delhi also blamed on the LeT. Both sides
deployed hundreds of thousands of troops but retreated after
international mediation.
Senior Pakistani security and defence officials described last week’s
troop movements toward India and away from Afghanistan, where Islamabad
is battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the tribal areas as
“limited”.
Islamabad, Sunday, AFP
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