Lashkar offers to put down arms in held Kashmir
NEW DELHI, Jan 19: In a move clearly timed to coincide with the inauguration of a new American administration, the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Jammu and Kashmir was reported on Monday to have offered to shun its armed campaign for justice if the international community would help peacefully resolve the bloody dispute dogging the Himalayan region for decades.
According to The Hindu, a LeT spokesperson based in Srinagar released a statement which said it was willing to terminate its terror campaign in return for international intervention on the Kashmir issue.
“If the world listens to our cries and plays its role in resolving the Kashmir issue, there is no point in continuing fighting,” said the spokesperson, who uses the code-name of Dr Abdullah Ghaznavi.
“Our struggle is only confined to Kashmir,” The Hindu quoted him as saying. “And we have no relations or association with armed groups operating at international level. We have no global agenda. We just want freedom of Kashmir and if it comes peacefully we will welcome it.
We don’t see armed struggle as the only way to achieve our goal. If the world listens to our cries and plays its role in resolving the Kashmir issue there would be no reason for us to fight.”
The newspaper said Dr Ghaznavi was responding to remarks of British
Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who has called for India to work more closely with Pakistan in seeking a resolution to the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the statement’s timing is shrewdly placed, just ahead of the inauguration of the Obama presidency, which is believed to have ideas for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute.
“Great Britain did not implement the agreed upon agenda of Partition,”
Dr Ghaznavi said, “[and] due to this mistake committed by the British government, our nation is suffering. The Lashkar-e-Taiba was compelled to take up arms due to suffering of our Kashmiri nation. Since the world did not respond to our peaceful calls for resolution of the Kashmir issue for almost 60 years, we had no choice but to take up arms for our freedom.”