NEW YORK, Oct 19: After two weeks of controversy over President Asif Zardari’s remarks in an interview with Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens wherein he termed Kashmiri freedom fighters “terrorists”, the paper has issued a clarification which ends up compounding the controversy.

The clarification, issued with recordings of the interview on its website, reinforces Mr Stephen’s assertion that Mr Zardari had used the word “terrorists”. But it asks readers to make their own judgement.

The WSJ, in the editorial remark, observed that “… when our Bret Stephens quoted Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari using just that (terrorists) word in an Oct 4 weekend interview, it sent Kashmiri protesters into the streets to burn effigies of Mr Zardari and has caused major political friction in Islamabad.

“But since the question of what exactly the president did or did not say is of

intense interest to our media colleagues in India and Pakistan, we are posting audio clips of some of Mr Zardari’s on-the-record remarks so that our readers can form their own opinions about exactly what the president intended to say,” the newspaper said.

“It’s not for us to tell the Pakistanis how to spin Mr Zardari’s comments.

In the case of Kashmir, Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London issued a statement, insisting that Pakistan extends moral and political support to Kashmiris struggling for the right of self-determination.