Pak will not progress until it improves ties with India: report

The Nawaz Sharief government cannot achieve its goal of economic recovery and industrial development without improving ties with India, says a report prepared for the US House of Representatives.

Disclosing that the Pakistan prime minister has not kept his promise on ending Islamabad-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir, the report anticipates that violence in the Indian border state would escalate despite resumption of Indo-Pakistan talks.

Signed by Yossef Bodansky, who is known for his studies on transborder Islamist terrorism, the report, Pakistan's continued sponsorship of Islamist terrorism is prepared by the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

''The extent of Pakistan's continued sponsorship of Islamist terrorism and subversion has become clear during, and in the aftermath of, the ongoing Taliban fighting in north-eastern Afghanistan,'' says the report.

''The terrorist training system in Afghanistan is fully integrated with the system of madarsas in Pakistan," the report says, "and graduates from here are sent to Kashmir and Central Asian states as the Taliban considers the Islamic community as one unified, organic whole."

''The importance of Islamist subversion for Islamabad is reflected in the growing numbers of Afghan and Pakistani expert terrorists being infiltrated into Kashmir and Tajikistan,'' the report said.

In this connection, the report quotes Brigadier (retired) A R Siddiqui who wrote about the possibility of the ''Taliban jihad'' becoming a model for Kashmir extremists sooner or later. He also said the Taliban would not leave their Kashmiri brethren alone. This was something which former Pak army chief General Mirza Aslam Baig, too, wrote about in an Urdu newspaper.

The report also referred to an Afghan envoy's statement in Karachi that the ''Taliban will extend support to Kashmiris only in a jihad and not in thbe political arena''.

India and other countries, who have been targeted by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence-sponsored Islamist terrorism, cannot patiently endure it. Pakistan's commitment to ''sacred causes'' such as the ''liberation of Kashmir'' can lead to a war, the report said.

UNI