Back from the brink?

Published on Saturday 5 January 2002 00:00

PAKISTAN’S president shook the hand of India’s leader today after giving a speech at a South Asian summit and offering "a hand of sincere friendship" between the two countries whose armies are on a war footing.

General Pervez Musharraf walked over to Indian prime minister Atal Vajpayee, who stood up and shook hands, with a faint smile.

"I extend a hand of genuine and sincere friendship to Prime Minister Vajpayee," Gen Musharraf had said from the podium at the summit in Katmandu, Nepal.

"Let us together commence a journey of peace, harmony and progress in South Asia."

He said his government "remains ready to engage in sustained dialogue with India at all times and all levels".

But in an indication of the bitter differences that still

divide the two nations, Gen Musharraf said the global campaign against terrorism must maintain a distinction between "legitimate resistances and freedom struggles on the one hand, and acts of terrorism on the other".

Gen Musharraf has repeatedly used the term "freedom fighters" to describe the Islamic militants who stage bomb, grenade and mortar attacks in India’s portion of the Kashmir province.

India says they are terrorists and has called on Pakistan to abide by the recent United Nations resolution that prohibits any support, active or passive, of terrorist groups. "We strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations," Gen Musharraf said in a speech to the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation. "We abhor violence."

He said he regretted that the meeting of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives had been delayed for more than two years because of the differences between India and Pakistan.

Mr Vajpayee had refused to meet Gen Musharraf after a 1999 border conflict in Kashmir, the region both nations have claimed in its entirety since 1947 and fought two wars over.

The ice was broken last July when they met in Agra, India. That meeting foundered, however, when the two were unable to agree on language relating to the militants and Kashmir.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair today condemned the terrorist attacks in India which sparked the tensions leading to the brink of war.

Mr Blair, speaking in Bangalore, southern India, on the latest leg of his tour of the sub continent, also used his speech to outline Britain’s role in world affairs after September 11.

Addressing the Confederation of Indian Industry, he said the attacks were an outrage. He said the bombing of a regional parliament and the suicide gun attack on India’s parliament were "an attack on democracy itself".