Press Trust of India Posted online: Friday, May 19, 2006 at 2001 hours IST Updated: Friday, May 19, 2006 at 2006 hours IST
New Delhi, May 19: The ISI continues to support various militant outfits including Lashker-e-Toiba which was provided with international aid received by Pakistan government after a devastating earthquake in Kashmir last year, a leader from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir said.
Speaking on the concluding day of the two-day conference on Kashmir held on the outskirts of the national capital, president of PoK-based Jammu and Kashmir National Students Federation Fazal Mahmood Baig said, “the one party that is most responsible for out ghulami (slavery) is Pakistan. I say this here and I say it on the other side of the border as well”.
“After the earthquake, the ISI gave all resources, including international aid received, to Lashker-e-Toiba and projected them as messiahs.
“These foreign fundamentalists have done great damage to Jammu and Kashmir and they should be immediately expelled from the state,” Baig was quoted in a press release issued by Institute of Conflict Management, organisers of the conference, as saying.
Senior leader of International Kashmir Alliance (IKA), an amalgam of expatriate Kashmiri separatist leaders, Abbas Butt said the problems in PoK never saw any resentment in the Kashmir Valley and cited an example of Mangla dam which displaced thousands of people.
Haji Gandal Shah, a leader from Gilgit and Baltistan, said non-interaction of leaders from both sides of Kashmir was the main reason for the issue becoming complex.
Another PoK leader, Nazir Ijaz said, “if under the peace process, we are given the opportunities to meet, we should take advantage of these opportunities to examine and work towards a workable alternative”.
