Author: Pioneer News Service/New
Delhi
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 5, 2001
The demands to attack POK and destroy
training camps there are becoming shriller with the RSS also echoing the
view taken by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah after the
terrorists attacks on the State Assembly.
RSS spokesman M G Vaidya said here
on Thursday that it was high-time that the supply line of the terrorists
should be broken by destroying the training camps.
When asked whether it would not
lead towards full scale war, he replied in the negative. It could turn
out to be a localised war, he said.
Mr Vaidya said that crossing the
LoC was different from declaring full scale war.
When asked why the Government should
not declare war with Pakistan, he said that it was for the Government to
decide on this.
The RSS spokesman said that the
Government's demand to Pakistan to hand over Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana
Masood Azar to India for trial vindicated its stand that the centre had
not done the right thing by releasing key terrorists during the Kandahar
hijack in December 1999.
"Our stand is vindicated. It was
strategically wrong to release key terrorists, including Masood, in exchange
for the safe return of passengers of the Indian Airlines plane hijacked
from Kathmandu to Kandhar," Mr Vaidya said.
Mr Vaidya said that the Government
should not have released Masood, whose Jaish-e-Mohammad has claimed responsibility
for this week's car bomb attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly resulting
in heavy loss of life.
He said that it was high time India
launched an attack in the PoK region to demolish terrorist camps. "When
it should be done, it is for the Government to decide," he said when asked
when New Delhi should act.
To a question, Mr Vaidya said that
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's letter to US President George Bush
in the wake of the attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly did not amount
to inviting US mediation in Jammu and Kashmir.
The purpose of the letter is to
seek the US intervention to eliminate terrorism, he said adding that the
US should use its influence on Pakistan to put an end to cross-border terrorism.
"We are not viewing the letter as an invitation to the US to solve Kashmir
problem," he said.
