NEW DELHI: Various political parties on Oct.30 condemned the reported statement of a senior US Official questioning Kashmir’s accession to India, Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy said the complete accession of Kashmir to India was as solid and legal as that of Texas and New Mexico into the US or that of the Confederacy into the Union when Abraham Lincoln was President.

“The Government should warn the United States that the Indian people are willing to forge economic development for the sake of keeping our national integrity and sovereignty, he said in a statement. “We shall pay any price to keep Kashmir as a part of India.”

Prof. Bhim Singh, President of the Jammu and Kashmir Panthers Party, also criticized the US administration for interfering in the internal affairs of India and Pakistan, After the Gulf War, the United States has become master of the most strategic areas in the Gulf and now its aim is to reach the air and waters of the Indo Pak region, he said.

Prof Bhim Singh said the United States had been working out a Strategy to carve out a safe zone in Asia for a base of the Pentagon and was using the situation in Jammu and Kashmir for its own advantage.

Ashok Bhan, General Secretary of the Jammuand Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee Mayed the double standards of the US Administration. “On the one hand, it has been talking of declaring Pakistan as a terrorist State, on the other it repudiates the peace process through the Shimla agreement, he said.

Meanwhile, former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh described as “ridiculous” the attempt by the United States to question the accession of Kashmir to India,

Asked for his comments on the statement by the US State Department of general in Washington, Natwar Singh said, “For someone to question accession of Kashmir to India is as ridiculous as anyone questioning the purchase of Louisiana by the US or the acquisition of Alaska,”

Singh said, “All one say in a Christian spinets that” Father, for give them for they know not what they did.”

Former Jammu and Kashmir Governor Jagmohan asked the Center to take a strong stand on the US policy in Kashmir and not to “tolerate buffoonery.”

Addressing a symposium on ‘Changing political scenario in Jammu and Kashmir and emerging threats promised by the Panun Kashmir here, said: “If we are strong US cannot top us. If we tolerate this buffoonery then only God can save us.”

Article extracted from this publication >>  November 5, 1993