960408

British MPs call

for early solution

of Kashmir issue

ISLAMABAD: Two British Parliamentarians, Mr. Gerald Kaufman, former shadow foreign secretary and George Galloway, hosted a lunch yesterday at Palais des Nations, for the ambassadors and diplomats from the United States, Latin America, Europe and Japan to brief them on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

The luncheon was also attended by a three-member All Parties Hurriyat Conference delegation from Srinagar. Mumtaz Ahmad Wani, Prof Hamida Bano and Abdul Majeed Banday have travelled all the way from Srinagar to Geneva to attend the current session of the Commission on human rights, says a message received from Geneva.

Gerald Kaufman told the diplomats that in the recent past the efforts to internationalise the issue of Jammu and Kashmir had been successful. He said that in Britain an organization had been created to "force" focus on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir Kaufman, who has visited the occupied Kashmir, Azad Kashmir and Ladakh in the past five years, told the gathering that Kashmir had been disfigured by death and destruction.

Kaufman said that the problem of Jammu and Kashmir was not merely a human rights issue, although massive human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir should get attention of all decent human-beings. Peace of the world depended on the resolution of the situation in the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges. Two countries were facing each other with the potential threat of nuclear confrontation. Mr. Kaufman told his audience that, while travelling along the Neelam River, he had found that the entire border between Azad Kashmir and the Indian-held Kashmir was not secure. As a matter of fact, a war was going on there. He said that the worst fear was that this could not be confined to only conventional weapons. It had much wider implications.-APP