News, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
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Attacks Need Not Derail India-Pak Talks
Zarar Khan • Associated Press, Arab News
KARACHI, 31 August 2003 — Pakistan’s prime minister said “one or two” terrorist attacks in India should not stop a slowly evolving peace process between the rival neighboring countries.
“The leadership in India knows that we desire peace,” Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali told reporters.
“One or two acts of terrorism (in India) will not affect the peace process between Pakistan and India,” Jamali said Friday night, after meeting businessmen in the southern city of Karachi.
He was referring to two bombings that killed at least 52 people on Monday in Bombay. India has blamed pro-Pakistan militants for the attacks. Pakistan has condemned the blasts and denied any involvement.
The Pakistani prime minister also played down a statement by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who ruled out talks with Pakistan until terrorist attacks in India end.
Jamali said Vajpayee had not accused Pakistan of being responsible for the blasts.
Yesterday Pakistan released an Indian teenager who was imprisoned four years ago for illegally straying across the border after running away from home. Ranjit Kumar was handed over to the Indian Border Security Force at Wagah, the only border checkpoint between the neighbors.
Kumar’s release came a week after Indian authorities freed a 13-year-old Pakistani boy, Munir Ahmed, who was also arrested after venturing across the border.
Kumar told reporters at Wagah that he lived in a border village in Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan. Kumar said he had crossed into Pakistan after losing his way in hilly terrain in June 1999.
Although he completed his prison sentence in 2001, he was not repatriated because his identity could not be confirmed by the Indian government.
“Later, I wrote a letter from jail to my family asking them to pursue my case with the Indian Home Ministry to confirm my antecedents to the Pakistani authorities,” he said.
Kumar says he is 19.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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