Author: Rashmee Z Ahmed, Times
News Network
Publication: The Times of India
- Internet Edition
Date: December 1, 2001
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1305615349
London: Even as rumours abound of
Pakistani intelligence officers joining the Western coalition's hunt for
Osama Bin Laden, British ministers have said that they believe the so-called
war on terror will change the nature of Pakistan's support for terrorism
in Kashmir.
In response to a parliamentary question
to junior foreign office minister Ben Bradshaw, who was asked specifically
for his "assessment of the Pakistani intelligence services' continuing
role in supporting terrorism in Kashmir", Bradshaw said that his government
had done its "utmost to urge the Pakistani government to cease any support
that they might have given in the past to the terrorists to whom (the MP)
refers".
Bradshaw added that Britain had
also urged a "cease (in) any support that Pakistan has given through its
intelligence service to the Taliban".
He said that the British government
believed "Pakistan had undergone a sea-change in its approach to those
two issues, and we will continue to press the Pakistani government to continue
along the right path."
Meanwhile, foreign secretary Jack
Straw has urged India and Pakistan to return to the negotiating table and
"resume the talks that they held in July in Agra".
Straw told Westminster that Britain
stood ready to "provide assistance to those negotiations, but only in circumstances
in which both sides agreed that our intervention would be helpful".
In response to a question he said
that the issue can only "be solved by bilateral discussions between India
and Pakistan... that is what we want to happen".
