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| India-Pakistan |
| Call for prosecution of perpetrators of Mumbai attacks |
| 2009-01-08 |
| Individuals and organisations guilty of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai should be named and punished, in a free, fair and impartial investigation and prosecution, intellectuals from India and Pakistan said in a joint statement on Wednesday. The statement said intellectuals from both the countries understood and shared the anger of the people over the attacks, adding that there was a dire need to eliminate terrorism that had impacted the entire South Asian region and threatened a peaceful co-existence of the people of the region. The group of Indian and Pakistani intellectuals, who met in Delhi in the past two days, appreciated the restraint exercised by New Delhi following calls for reprisal from within India. In the statement, they appreciated the Indian government's readiness and determination to discourage hasty conclusions concerning the nature and extent of the involvement, if any, of the Pakistani state, urging it to refrain from taking any steps which would weaken the bonds that had developed between the civil societies of the two countries over the past five years. The statement said war was not an option and all talk of partial or targeted action was ill-informed and dangerous given that both the countries were nuclear-armed. Peace process: In the statement, the Indo-Pak intellectuals said they believed it was necessary for the two governments to resume the peace process. They welcomed the statement made by Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Srinagar that India-Pakistan dialogue in the context of Kashmir would not be affected. They said the recent elections in Indian-held Kashmir provided encouraging signals including a high turnout and the deliberate eschewing of violence by terrorists. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 To say that war is not an option is to give up. War has to stay on the table if India wants to retain any hope of getting those thugs. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2009-01-08 08:43 |