LAHORE, Dec 20: Jamaat-i-Islami amir Qazi Husain Ahmad says Pakistan requires courageous leadership to counter international conspiracies to declare it a failed state.

Talking to a delegation of overseas Pakistanis from Denmark, Germany, Italy and Norway here on Saturday, the Jamaat leader said the United States was conspiring to dismember Pakistan and Nato forces were attacking its western frontier. India was encouraged to attack it on the pretext of terrorist attacks on Mumbai in the same manner as the US had used 9/11 as an excuse for invading Afghanistan, he said.

He said India was accusing Pakistan of terrorism despite the fact that 14 separatist movements and more than 100 militant organisations were training the youth in terrorist camps there. Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities and their places of worship were not safe from fanatic Hindus in India where mosques were being demolished and churches set on fire, he said.

He said India had unleashed state terrorism in held Kashmir, but had got a welfare organisation banned in Pakistan by getting it declared a terrorist one from the UN Security Council. The Pakistan government had also accepted the restriction without questioning its logic and closed down its schools, colleges and welfare centres, depriving thousands of students of education and the destitute of assistance.

He said India had started dictating Pakistan owing to the cowardly policies of the government, and was threatening to adopt other options in case of refusal to oblige it. Courageous and sincere leadership was the need of the hour to liberate the Pakistani nation from the US stranglehold.

The Pakistan government itself had asked China to withdraw its technical objection on UN Security Council resolution. He said Pakistan should make efforts to free it from the American stranglehold with the help of China.

Rally: The Labour Party Pakistan and the Communist Mazdoor Kisan Party held a rally for peace at Faisal Square on Saturday.

Workers of both the organisations displayed banners and placards and raised slogans against attempts to increase tension between Pakistan and India to undermine the efforts for normalisation of relations between the two countries.

Speaking on the occasion, Labour Party Secretary Rana Aslam, former secretary Farooq Tariq and Communist Mazdoor Kisan Party leader Ali Khan said people of Pakistan and India wanted peace in the region. Certain forces were, however, conspiring against peace in the region by increasing tension between the two nuclear powers.