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Benazir Bhutto admits there
is terrorism in Kashmir

Dharam Shouri in New York

Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto has admitted there is terrorism in Kashmir and that the menace has damaged the cause of Kashmir.

"Terrorist acts have damaged the cause of Kashmir," Bhutto was quoted as saying by Pakistan's independent NNI news agency.

She said her government had resisted the "militarisation" of the movement in Kashmir. "I had put my foot down on creation of private armies and militias in Pakistan because such activities are unconstitutional and destabilising to the state."

Bhutto told the agency in Washington on Saturday that money was sent from Saudi Arabia by private individuals to destabilise her government as they felt that a woman's rule was "un-Islamic."

She said it was only after she was "thrown out" that things in Afghanistan went downhill.

The Taleban, she said, started as a stabilising movement and initially brought peace to Afghanistan. The advice rendered to the Taleban leadership by her government was heeded. But their radicalisation came later, Bhutto said.

Bhutto also admitted to the links of her government with Taleban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar, but asserted that as long as her government was in office, the Taleban did not exhibit the kind of behaviour that had since come to be associated with them.

There was no Osama bin Laden, "as he came to be", during her time and no private militias engaged in the kind of activities that he had since been involved in, she asserted.

She said the present situation had provided a good opportunity for Pakistan to clean up its house. In the end, the best guarantee for a country's security is a democratic order, Bhutto added.

PTI

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