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India News Network Digest    Fri, 11 Mar 94      Volume 2 : Issue 202

Today's News Topics:

   Pakistan fails in bid to win U.N. criticism of India
   Indian Actress and widow of Russian Painter dies
   Russia says India to pay for wrecked Aeroflot Jet
   Activists dissatisfied as U.N. Rights Meeting ends
   Kashmiris glum over Pakistan's U.N. defeat
   Asian women to testify on sex violence
   A year after Bombay blasts, victims carry scars
   India grounds private airline on safety grounds
   India refuses to allow Amnesty International into Kashmir
   Pakistani Opposition calls for Bhutto's resignation
   Indian Troops kill Kashmiri woman, Pakistan says
   Pakistan claims gains over Kashmir at UN Group

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Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 09:54:58 -0500
From: chadha@thumper.bellcore.com (Ritu Chadha)
Subject: Pakistan Fails in Bid to Win U.N. Criticism of India

#1  PAKISTAN FAILS IN BID TO WIN U.N. CRITICISM OF INDIA

           GENEVA (AP) _ Pakistan lost a hard-fought bid Wednesday to send
a U.N. fact-finding team to investigate allegations of human rights
abuses in Kashmir.
           After finding itself isolated in the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights
Commission, Pakistan dropped a resolution condemning ``gross and
consistent violations'' in the disputed Indian territory.
           Iran led an appeal by more than a dozen countries to persuade
its Islamic ally not to push for a vote.
           It cited India's ``readiness ... to facilitate a visit by a
group of ambassadors from Muslim countries to Jammu and Kashmir.''
           To stave off a vote, India organized visits by foreign
ambassadors and agreed to let the International Committee of the
Red Cross visit detainees in Kashmir.
           The outcome was a blow for Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto, who had compared the situation in Kashmir to the ``darkest
days of the Holocaust.''
           In the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, Foreign Minister Sardef
Aseff put on a brave face, saying, ``It's a great success ... that
for the first time in 29 years we brought the Kashmir question onto
the platform of a United Nations organization.
           ``Our objective was to awaken the world conscience on Kashmir,
and we have succeeded.''
           Indian Foreign Minister Dinesh Singh said in a statement
Wednesday, ``We are grateful to countries like Iran which have
prevailed on Pakistan to see reason and persuade it to withdraw the
resolution.''
           The row has dominated newspapers in India and Pakistan for
weeks.
           Nearly 10,000 people have died in Kashmir since late 1989, when
a campaign by Muslim militants for an independent homeland flared
into violence.
           India and Pakistan have gone to war twice over Kashmir since
former British colonial India was split into Hindu India and mainly
Muslim Pakistan in 1947.
           At a session devoted to voting on investigations in countries
with the worst rights records, Pakistan chief delegate Iqbal Akhund
reluctantly said he would drop the proposal.
           But he later said Pakistan had not formally withdrawn the
resolution and so it would remain on the official records of the
commission's six-week session.
           ``It is not a bilateral issue,'' he said. ``If large numbers of
people are being killed, it's no more bilateral than Sarajevo.''

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 09:56:30 -0500
From: chadha@thumper.bellcore.com (Ritu Chadha)
Subject: Indian Actress and Widow of Russian Painter Dies

#2  INDIAN ACTRESS AND WIDOW OF RUSSIAN PAINTER DIES

           BANGALORE, India (AP) _ Devika Rani Roerich, one of India's
earliest film stars and the widow of Russian painter Svyatoslav
Roerich, has died. She was 86.
           Mrs. Roerich was hospitalized about two weeks ago with
bronchitis. She died Wednesday in this southern Indian city.
           Her death left in doubt the future of her 457-acre estate and
art collection, which the Roerichs fought to keep against a
confiscation order by the state government of Karnataka.
           Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, in a condolence message,
praised Mrs. Roerich's pioneering role in Indian cinema.
           Devika Rani was a socialite who was among several drawn into the
film industry by director Himanshu Rai to give Indian films
respectability. She later married Rai and starred in some of the
first films with social themes.
           In 1945, following Rai's death, she married Roerich, a Russian
who had moved to India in the 1930s and who was known for his
portraits of independence leaders Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal
Nehru. He died 13 months ago.
           In 1992, the state government tried to take over the estate
outside Bangalore. At the urging of then-Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi, the estate had been exempted from land reforms that set a
ceiling on the amount of property allowed to be privately held.
           The government's plan was blocked when the couple's friends set
up an international trust managed by Russian President Boris
Yeltsin and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
           Just before Mrs. Roerich's death, the state government issued a
new ordinance empowering itself to take over part of the estate.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 22:03:37 -0500 (EST)
From: kvrao@dad.bgsu.edu (Prof K. V. Rao)
Subject: India wants to renew bi-lateral discussions with Pakistan

Date=3/10/94
Byline=Michael Drudge
Dateline=New Delhi

Intro:  India says that it wants to renew bi-lateral discussions
with Pakistan after Pakistan dropped its effort to have India
condemned for human rights abuses in Indian Kashmir.  V-O-A
Correspondent Michael Drudge reports from New Delhi.

Text:  Indian Foreign Secretary Krishnan Srinivasan says India
wants to resume talks with Pakistan now that a diplomatic fight
over human rights in Kashmir has been wrapped up.

Mister Srinivasan spoke at a news conference in New Delhi
Thursday, giving the Indian reaction to Pakistan's decision to
withdraw an attempt to get the United Nations Human Rights
Commission to condemn India.

India and Pakistan held three days of inconclusive talks in
January about their differences, including the Kashmir dispute.
Since then, the South Asian neighbors have engaged in a high
profile struggle about questions of human rights and terrorism in
Kashmir, where Muslim militants are fighting to break away from
India.

Mister Srinivasan says India is confident the Pakistani
Resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Commission Meeting
would have been defeated if it had been brought to a vote.  And
he says Pakistan must have known it would lose.

"I think when you call a spade a spade, that Pakistan did
 Not  want to get this resolution to a vote and let me
 try to be candid about it, they did  not  want it to
 come to a vote and i think they were looking for an out."

Mister Srinivasan says Iran and China played a helpful role in
convincing Pakistan to withdraw the resolution, and he says India
is grateful to them.

Iran says a team of Ambassadors from Muslim countries will go to
Indian Kashmir to look into the allegations of human rights
abuses.  Mister Srinavasan says India has  no  objection and
there are  no  restrictions on Ambassadors accredited to India to
visit Kashmir, except for the envoys from Pakistan and Libya.
(Signed)

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 10:55:02 -0500 (EST)
From: "Sukhjinder S Bajwa" <bajwa@asd.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Russia says India to pay for wrecked Aeroflot Jet

#3  RUSSIA SAYS INDIA TO PAY FOR WRECKED AEROFLOT JET

    MOSCOW, March 11 (Reuter) - Russian aviation officials said on Friday
that India had in principle agreed to pay $7 million to cover the cost of
an Aeroflot airliner destroyed in an accident at New Delhi airport earlier
this week.
     The Ilyushin Il-86 wide-bodied jet was written off on Wednesday when a
Boeing 737 operated by domestic airline Sahara India crashed into it
shortly after take-off. Eight people were killed, including three Russians.
     "Russian and Indian lawyers are studying this question. They have
already agreed in principle that India will pay for the cost of the
airliner," said a senior Aeroflot official who asked to remain anonymous.
     He said experts calculated the cost of plane to be 12 billion roubles
($7 million).

#4  ACTIVISTS DISSATISFIED AS U.N. RIGHTS MEETING ENDS

    By Philippe Naughton
     GENEVA, March 11 (Reuter) - The U.N. Human Rights Commission wrapped
up its six-week annual session on Friday with activists complaining that
political expediency had once again prevented major powers being held to
account.
     A U.N. spokesman said that at its 50th session the 53-member
commission had passed more than 100 resolutions.
     Among the highights, he noted, was the decision to appoint the first
United Nations special investigator into violence against women around the
world.
     Among other resolutions were annual condemnations of abuses in Iran,
Iraq and Burma as well as a curious resolution in which the U.N. formally
recognised for the first time that anti-Semitism was a form of racism.
     But human rights activists, who are vocal observers on the sidelines
of the commission, were quick to point out that Pakistan had been pressured
into dropping a draft resolution effectively condemning India for abuses in
Kashmir.
     They were especially critical of the decision, for the third straight
year, to take "no action" on a draft resolution on China.
     "This is another victory of power politics over human rights," said
Reed Brody of the International Human Rights Law Group, one of dozens of
non-governmental organisations or NGOs represented at the commission.
     "It is easy to condemn small countries, but when the largest country
in the world imprisons thousands in its gulag and destroys the ethnic
identity of Tibet, the commission is paralysed," Brody added.
     Long prevented by Cold War rivalries and bloc voting from any serious
censure of rights abuses in many countries, the commission has shown
greater flexibility in recent years.
     But member and observer states negotiate furiously behind the scenes
to avoid censure and delegates freely concede that political considerations
are still primary and that other voting blocs have taken over from the
East-West divide.
     Brody, who coordinated the lobbying efforts of more than 3,000 NGOs at
last year's World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, accused the
commission of being unwilling to heed its own investigators.
     He pointed out that although the U.N.'s expert panel on arbitrary
detention found that prisoners had been abritrarily detained for more than
five years in Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, the Philippines, Syria and Yemen, the
commission had taken no steps to call for their release.
     Government delegations were more satisfied. Former New York
Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, who headed the U.S. delegation, told a
news conference the meeting was "one of the most successful commission
sessions in quite some time."
     Ferraro pointed to resolutions on Cuba, Sudan and former Yugoslavia as
success stories. She also said the United States was pleased that Pakistan
had been persuaded to drop its resolution on Kashmir.
     She added: "On the other hand, we were disappointed that China was
again able to block the resolution condemning their continuing human rights
abuses."

#5  KASHMIRIS GLUM OVER PAKISTAN'S U.N. DEFEAT

    By Yusuf Jameel
     SRINAGAR, India, March 11 (Reuter) - Ordinary Kashmiris appeared
generally glum on Friday over Pakistan's withdrawal of a bid to win United
Nations condemnation of alleged Indian human rights abuses in the Himalayan
region.
     "I'm upset over Pakistan's failure at Geneva and I think that it was
my, and my nation's, bad luck," said handicrafts dealer Abdul Samad in a
typical comment in Srinagar, Indian-ruled Kashmir's summer capital.
     So was the comment from pro-independence guerrilla leader Javed Ahmed
Mir, president of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which is fighting
to reunite the parts of Kashmir held by India and Pakistan and make the
state independent.
     "The withdrawal of the resolution at the 11th hour by Pakistan can
only have a psychological impact on the Kashmiri mind," he said.
     Pakistan made a major diplomatic push to persuade the U.N. Human
Rights Commission in Geneva to pass a resolution condemning India for
alleged abuses in fighting a bloody rebellion in the two-thirds of Kashmir
it rules.
     The neighbours have have fought two of their three wars since
independence from Britain in 1947 over Kashmir and India accuses Islamabad
of formenting "terrorism" in the region that would stop if it halted aid
and training. Islamabad denies any such involvement.
     Pro-Pakistani politicians echoed Islamabad's view that, despite having
to withdraw the resolution, it had put the Kashmir issue firmly on the
international agenda, and that was a victory.
     New Delhi battled hard to thwart Islamabad's bid and Indian officials
were privately chortling at what they saw as a major diplomatic victory
over old enemy Pakistan.
     Publicly, they confined themselves to expressions of satisfaction.
     "All in all, a very satisfactory conclusion," Foreign Secretary Kris
Srinavasan, the foreign ministry's top diplomat, told reporters in New
Delhi. "We were confident we would win a vote."
     He denied a deal was done to allow Moslem ambassadors to go to Kashmir
to see for themselves what was going on in return for the withdrawal of the
resolution, as Iran suggested in a statement urging Pakistan defer the
resolution.
     Srinavasan said there was never any restriction on diplomats visiting
the region and the Indian government had always been happy to arrange
visits, should help be needed.
     However, the first group of ambassadors went to Srinagar only after
Pakistan introduced the resolution and that was a source of some
satisfaction at the heart of the four-year-old rebellion that has cost an
estimated 16,000 lives.
     "That is, perhaps, the achievement of the resolution," said Srinagar
transport operator Kursheed Khan.
     "Another achievement was that India, boasting that it was a champion
of human rights, was for the first time in the dock on that very issue and
had to be on the defensive throughout," said a senior member of a
pro-Pakistan militant group.
     Some expressed deep disappointment in Iran's evident role in
persuading Pakistan to drop the resolution.
     "It is indeed unfortunate that on the one hand Tehran claims to be a
true Islamic country and sympathiser and comforter of the oppressed, but on
the other hand does nothing to prove it," said a spokesman for the hardline
Hezb-ul-Mujahideen.

#6  ASIAN WOMEN TO TESTIFY ON SEX VIOLENCE

    TOKYO, March 11 (Reuter) - Asian women victimised by sex slavery and
trafficking gather in Tokyo this weekend to testify before an international
"tribunal" aimed at finding ways to prevent sexual violence, organisers
said on Friday.
     It is the first such event to be organised in Japan, where tens of
thousands of Asian women work illegally in red-light districts.
     Saturday's hearing is organised by the Manila-based Asian Women's
Human Rights Committee (AWHRC). It will stage mock trials based on the
experiences of women who have been sexually exploited or exposed to
violence.
     Women from more than 10 countries, including Thailand, India and
Cambodia, are to give testimony to the tribunal, some as witnesses and
others as victims, the organisers said.
     They will include former "comfort women" from Korea and the
Philippines, coerced into providing sex to Japanese soldiers during World
War Two, as well as a Thai mother who lost her daughter to sex traffickers
in Japan.
     Experts on human rights and war crimes, including Indian Supreme Court
Justice Krishna Iyer and a representative of Croatia's War Victim Women's
Centre, are to act as jurors and review the cases.

#7  A YEAR AFTER BOMBAY BLASTS, VICTIMS CARRY SCARS

    By Moses Manoharan
     BOMBAY, March 11 (Reuter) - A year after a serial bomb attack on
India's commercial capital, survivors still carry the scars of the
bloodshed, but the courts are yet to convict anyone in Bombay's biggest
criminal conspiracy.
     Several buildings also bear the marks of the 13 bombs that exploded
across Bombay on March 12, 1993, killing 260 people and dramatically
changing the lives of hundreds of others.
     "I still wake up screaming. It has been a nightmare for me," says Ivan
D'Souza, 33, who was walking by the stock exchange for lunch when a bomb
exploded at about 2 p.m.
     Shrapnel pierced his eyes and stomach, blinding him as he fell to the
ground. He is still blind in one eye.
     But Susan Mathew, a sales manager, says she looks forward to the
anniversary of the blasts despite the terrible wounds they inflicted on
her.
     "I will celebrate being alive," says 25-year-old Mathew, who lay
unconscious in a Bombay hospital for two days after undergoing brain
surgery.
     Her optimism seems true of the sentiment generally in Bombay, which
has been buoyed by an inflow of business made possible by reforms that have
opened up the Indian economy to the world for the first time in four
decades.
     But Bombay police are taking no chances. "We have taken precautions,"
Bombay police chief Satish Sahney said, noting that festivals for Hindus
and Moslems, India's two main religious communities, fell near the
anniversary. But he does not expect any trouble this year.
     Moslems celebrate the Ramadan fasting month's end on March 14. Hindus
held a festival for the deity Shiva on Thursday.
     Riots had broken out in Bombay in December 1992, and the following
January, after the destruction of a Moslem shrine in the northern town of
Ayodhya by Hindu zealots who believed it stood on the birthplace of the
deity Rama.
     The riots are believed to have led to the revenge bombings which
targetted such Bombay landmarks as the stock exchange and headquarters of
the national airline carrier, Air India.
     Indian police have linked old enemy Pakistan and India's Moslem crime
syndicates to the blasts.
     "Legal experts are shocked that the trial has yet to begin. They feel
that given the nature of the offence, things should have moved much
faster," Bombay's Independent newspaper said.
     Charges have been filed against 195 people, but the city's biggest
ever trial is yet to begin because of difficulties in finding a secure
courtroom and legal tangles.
     The charges run into 9,392 pages for each accused, and the documents
were dragged into court in sacks for a preliminary hearing which involved a
cross section of Bombay's celebrities.
     Among the accused, film star Sanjay Dutt is out on bail, and Dawood
Ibrahim, accused by the police of running a multi-million dollar crime
empire in Bombay, is among 44 who have fled India or remained out of the
country.
     At India's premier bourse the only concern of the brokers one year
after the blast is the fate of the scrips being traded.
     Nazmi Sabuwallah says the communal tensions of the past few months
have been eased by a more powerful force -- cash.
     "I am a Moslem and Miraj is a Hindu and we are close business
associates as well as close friends," says Sabuwallah. "For us, it was
business as usual the next day."

#8  INDIA GROUNDS PRIVATE AIRLINE ON SAFETY GROUNDS

    BOMBAY, March 11 (Reuter) - The director-general of civil aviation has
grounded India's private airline Damania Airways for one month for alleged
violations of safety regulations, officials said on Friday.
     Damania was forced to cancel all 26 of its flights on Thursday, the
first anniversary of the airline receiving its licence to operate.
     The Civil Aviation department said the airline would be grounded for a
month or until it was able to show corrective steps had been taken.
     Damania was accused of failing to comply with safety regulations and
allowing excessive alcohol to be consumed on a flight.
     The action against the private airline coincides with concern about
the safety of private airline operators following the crash of a Sahara
Airlines Boeing 737 on Tuesday in Delhi in which eight people died.
     The department said it received compaints that mandatory safety
announcements such as fastening of seat belts and use of emergency exits
were done after take-off instead of before on some Damania flights.
     "The cabin crew were busy serving drinks to the passengers during
taxiing instead of making pre-flight announcements, which is a serious
safety lapse," it said.
     In one case, according to the Civil Aviation department's order
grounding the airline, a drunken passenger started fighting with fellow
passengers as a Damania flight was landing at Delhi on January 3.
     Damania Airways director Vispi Damania said the grounds for suspension
were flimsy. State-run Indian Airlines had been involved in major plane
crashes and had not been grounded.
     "We have been suspended on flimsy grounds of safety violations. People
are always getting drunk on planes," he said.
     He told Reuters the order suspending flights had been received at the
last minute, just ahead of the expiry of the airline's annual licence. It
had organised a large party in Bombay for Thursday night to celebrate the
anniversary.
     Damania, voted in a recent magazine poll as "India's most preferred
airline," has four Boeing 737s and one Beechcraft short-haul plane.
     Damania said the airline would lose turnover of around 120-150 million
rupees ($3.8-$4.8 million) in a month.
     It is one of 17 new private airline operators that have sprung up over
the past two years since India began liberalising its aviation policy. It
carries about 2,800 passengers a day.
     There had been complaints in parliament about Damania's liberal
distribution of alcohol to passengers on flights. State-run Indian Airlines
does not serve alcoholic drinks.

#9  INDIA REFUSES TO ALLOW AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL INTO KASHMIR

By KRISHNAN GURUSWAMY
 Associated Press Writer
   NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- India refuses to allow Amnesty International
into Kashmir to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by security
forces fighting Muslim separatist guerrillas, the government announced
Thursday.
   The London-based human rights monitoring group "has not been fair or
balanced or just with regard to India," Foreign Secretary K. Srinivasan
told reporters.
   Srinivasan told reporters that Kashmir, however, has been and will
remain open to diplomats who want to conduct independent inquiries.
   India admits occasional excesses by troops, but denies allegations by
Amnesty and other groups of widespread abuse in Kashmir, the only
majority-Muslim region in the predominantly Hindu India.
   Muslims in Kashmir seek independence or to beome part of Pakistan, which
also contains parts of Kashmir, which was divided between India and
Pakistan when the British relinquished their control in the Asian
subcontinent.
   Pakistan, which has fought two wars with India over Kashmir, recently
launched a campaign to highlight what is calls a genocide of Muslims by
Indian troops in Kashmir.
   About 8,200 people have been killed in the Himalayan region since the
four-decade-old separatist movement flared up in December 1989. India says
the rebellion was ignited by Pakistan and that it is still aiding it.
   Islamabad denies the charge, although militants in Kashmir openly admit
to being trained and armed by Pakistan.

#10  PAKISTANI OPPOSITION CALLS FOR BHUTTO'S RESIGNATION

By ANWAR IQBAL
   ISLAMABAD (UPI) -- The Pakistani opposition Muslim League party asked
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the Foreign Minister Sardar Assef to
resign Thursday following the government's failure to gain international
support for a resolution condemning Indian human rights violations in
Kashmir.
   Pakistaan had presented the resolution before the U.N. Human Rights
Commission in Geneva demanding that a fact-finding mission be sent to the
disputed Himalayan territory.
   After being advised by China and Iran, Pakistan withdrew the resolution
Wednesday when it became obvious that more than 40 of the 53 commission
members, including the United States, would abstain from voting.
   "Withdrawal of the resolution is a very serious blow to the Kashmiri
cause," said former Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz during a joint news
conference with other opposition leaders.
   At a separate apperance, Foreign Secretary Shaharyar Khan defended the
government's decision to withdraw the resolution.
   Khan said the resolution had achieved its objective of drawing the
world's attention to the alleged human rights violations committed by
Indian troops in Kashmir.
   "Now it is being talked about in every capital of the world," Khan said.
   He asserted that Pakistani pressure had forced India to accept an
Iranian proposal to send a delegation of Muslim ambassadors to Kashmir to
review the situation.
   Khan demanded that the ambassadors should not be selected from the
diplomatic corps in New Delhi or Islamabad. He said instead they should be
taken from a neutral capital.

#11  INDIAN TROOPS KILL KASHMIRI WOMAN, PAKISTAN SAYS

    ISLAMABAD, March 10 (Reuter) - Indian troops killed a woman and wounded
two men when they fired across a ceasefire line in Kashmir on Wednesday,
Pakistan's official APP news agency said on Thursday.
     Parveen Bibi, 45, was hit by two bullets in her stomach and died
instantly when the Indians "resorted to unprovoked and indiscriminate
firing" on a village in Kot Ketehra sector of Pakistan-controlled Azad
(free) Kashmir, the agency said.
     The two men were seriously injured in other separate violations of the
U.N.-monitored line, which stands between the Indian and Pakistani armies
in the disputed Himalayan region.
     India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since
independence from Britain in 1947 over the region.

#12  PAKISTAN CLAIMS GAINS OVER KASHMIR AT UN GROUP

     By Raja Asghar
     ISLAMABAD, March 10 (Reuter) - Pakistan said on Thursday it had gained
by focusing world attention on alleged Indian human rights violations in
disputed Kashmir although it had dropped a bid to win United Nations
censure of New Delhi.
     A senior minister said Islamabad had also received Indian assurances
through Iran and China that it would cut the number of troops in the
Himalayan region in exchange for Pakistan's not insisting on a vote on the
censure move at the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Wednesday.
     However, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League (PML) party called
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's decision not to push the resolution against
India a foreign policy disaster, and demanded that Foreign Minister Assef
Ahmad Ali resign.
     Bowing to pressure from China, Iran and 15 other countries, Pakistan
on Wednesday informed the commission in Geneva that it was seeking no
action on the proposed resolution that sought to condemn India.
     "We never went to win, we only wanted to register the issue on the
international agenda and that is where we succeeded," Ali said in Karachi.
"Kashmir is back on the world agenda after remaining in cold-storage for 30
years."
     "Things changed so rapidly yesterday that at one stage Iran had
assured us that India would cut down the size of its military presence in
Kashmir," Information and Broadcasting Minister Khalid Ahmad Kharal said.
     "China has also given some similar assurances," he told reporters in
the Punjab provincial capital Lahore.
     Troop reduction was one of four demands by Pakistan to create a
congenial atmosphere for talks with India on the Kashmir dispute. The
others are release of political detainees, permission to human rights
groups to visit Indian Kashmir and withdrawal of what Islamabad calls
draconian laws.
     Foreign Secretary Shaharyar Mohammad Khan said Pakistan had achieved
its aim of focusing attention on alleged human rights abuses in the
Himalayan region.
     "Every foreign office in the world is looking at Kashmir as an issue,
a human rights issue," he told a news conference.
     Islamabad had only deferred the resolution, possibly to be taken up
again next year, Shaharyar said.
     Pakistan's move at the U.N. commission was an excellent start, he
said. "Over the last few months, pressures have grown over
India...Pressures are now beginning to bite."
     Iranian ambassador Sirous Nasseri told the commission in Geneva on
Wednesday that New Delhi had agreed to allow a delegation of diplomats from
Islamic countries into Kashmir, where Indian forces are fighting a revolt
by militants seeking independence, or union with Pakistan.
     Shaharyar said the delegation should comprise ambassadors not posted
in India to keep them free from influence by New Delhi, and proposed the
secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference nominate the
delegation.
     The resolution, proposed by Bhutto in a speech to the commission on
February 1, caused a storm of anger across the political spectrum in India
and put a further strain on the cool relations between the two countries.
     India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, which has a
largely Moslem population, since the sub-continent won independence from
British rule in 1947. India controls two-thirds and Pakistan the remaining
third of Kashmir.
     Pakistan said earlier it proposed the resolution because India had
violated a pledge to scale back its military operations against Moslem
guerrillas who launched an uprising four years ago in which at least 15,000
people have died.
     India argues the guerrillas have been armed and trained by Pakistan
and are using terror to force Kashmiris to support their cause as well as
driving out both Hindus and Moslems who want the state to remain part of
India.
     "The whole nation is stunned...by the foreign policy setback at
Geneva," PML secretary-general Sartaj Aziz told a news conference in
Islamabad, accusing Bhutto's four-month-old government of going uprepared
to the U.N. commission.
     "This was a foreign policy disaster," he said. "The foreign minister
must resign from his office."

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End of India News Network Digest
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