Author: PTI
Publication: The Newspaper Today
Date: September 1, 2002
The United States has said a bilateral
dialogue between India and Pakistan will be possible only if Assembly elections
in Jammu and Kashmir are allowed to be peaceful.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage in an interview to PBS television on Friday said, "Incidents of
violence are on the upswing" in Kashmir and hoped that a peaceful Assembly
elections in Jammu and Kashmir would resume Indo-Pak dialogue.
"The cross-border incursions are
up from the end of June," he said in reply to a question whether infiltration
into India had increased recently.
Asked if Pakistan President Pervez
Musharraf was doing everything possible to stop terrorism in Kashmir, Armitage
said, "Only President Musharraf and his colleagues know for sure, but we
think that he is exerting some efforts."
On the issue of Pakistani support
to terror attack in India, the American diplomat said, "...I don't want
to get into what we know and and what we don't know.... However, there
are jehadists that are outside the control of the Pakistani authority.
There are also jehadists that were already existent in Kashmir. They don't
need to cross the line of control to cause trouble."
"They (India) have said that if
the elections could proceed free of violence from Pakistan, then they would
entertain a dialogue. President Musharraf, for his part, told me that his
government's position would be to condemn violence during any electoral
season," Armitage said.
