NEW YORK: Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has said “the political process in Pakistan will resolve the Mohajir Qaumi Movement problem in Karachi,” but for India, which she accused of training MQM activists and “transforming them into terrorists.” Ms. Bhutto observes: “South Asia will have a bleak future if such cross border interference, masterminded by over grown intelligence services, continues. The political process will resolve MQM problems in Karachi, and Indian interference will result only in injecting avoid able tension into interstate relations.” Accusing India of hegemonic ambitions in the South Asian region, Ms. Bhutto says: “not a single state in South Asia has escaped gross interference in its internal affairs, Even the smallest of states which pose no conceivable threat to their great neighbor, have seen this interference plunge them into long periods of internal turmoil.”
“This unfortunate,” she goes on, “that India did not resist the temptation to contribute support to MQM terrorism. At a number of locations in India, scores of MQM activists continue to be transformed into terrorists.” Saying that Pakistan would like to open an entirely new chapter of cooperative relations with India, Ms Bhutto called upon the Indian leaders “to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Kashmir problem as well as reciprocally binding nonproliferation regime for nuclear weapons and delivery systems.” She invited India’s leaders to take parallel measures to limit and reduce both countries’ military spending in the interest of billions people living in South Asia.
She said as the two largest states of the subcontinent, India and Pakistan, owe it to South Asia to transform its only regional organization, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, into a more meaningful and effective vehicle of regional economic and social development. Ms Bhutto said most of the instability faced by Pakistan “comes not from the domestic separatism but from external interference and threats”. She expressed the hope that “economic policies in South Asia in the direction of free enterprise and participation in the global economy will counteract and neutralize agitation tendencies.”
Article extracted from this publication >> September 11, 1996
