LeT reverts to Kashmir cause at anti-India rally

NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR - The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) through its banned frontal outfit the Jama’at-ud-Dawaah (JuD) Thursday vowed to revert to the “Kashmir cause” and continue supporting a separatist campaign in the terror-riven state of India.

It was announced at an anti-India jehadi rally organised to express “solidarity with Kashmir” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir by the JuD.

Leaders of radical groups and terror outfits based in Pakistan-administered Kashmir participated in the rally, which was attended by thousands of people, including men and women, eye witnesses told IANS over phone.

Among those who attended the rally were top jehadi leaders, including Hizbul Mujahideen commander Syed Salahuddin and JuD leader Abdul Rehman Makki.

The rally in Pakistani Kashmir’s capital Muzaffarabad came amid reports that India has sent a formal proposal to Pakistan for talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries, stressing that it will carry on these discussions with “an open and positive mind”.

But New Delhi was also keeping a close watch on the meeting ‘Yakjehti-e-Kashmir’ (Solidarity with Kashmir) the JuD held after lying low for over a year following the Mumbai terror attacks. The 26/11 attacks India blamed on LeT left 166 people killed.

The Thursday gathering comes a day before Pakistan is to observe the annual Kashmir Solidarity Day Feb 5.

JuD’s chief of Pakistan-administered Kashmir chapter Abdul Aziz Alvi addressed the gathering and vowed to continue supporting “the freedom movement in Kashmir”.

“Alvi in his emotional speech said that JuD will support at every cost the Kashmir cause to achieve Kashmiris’ birth right of self-determination according to the United Nations resolutions,” Jahanzeb Khan, one of the participants in the rally, told IANS over phone.

The meeting is seen as the LeT’s stepped up approach to shift its focus back on Jammu and Kashmir.

LeT chief Haafiz Saeed, blamed by India as one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks, is expected to address a similar rally in Islamabad Friday.

Pakistan has announced Friday as a public holiday for “continued support to the Kashmir struggle”.

Many outfits have announced demonstrations and rallies in several cities and towns of Pakistan, according to official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency.

“As a mark of respect to the struggle of Kashmiris, one-minute silence would be observed, bringing all rail and road traffic across the country to a standstill,” APP reported.

Former chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Hamid Gul, who was also an invitee to the Muzaffarabad conference, said the Pakistan government was aware about the jehadi rally.

Gul rejected New Delhi’s apprehensions about the rally.

“If India is feeling unhappy, let them (be),” Gul told news channel Times Now. He said the meeting was “an important human cause” and India should “face the bitter truth in Kashmir”.

Denying that the JuD, banned by the UN, was a terror outfit, Gul said: “India and Pakistan should make clear the distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters.”

The meeting also comes as foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are likely to meet after Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s expected visit to Islamabad later this month, brightening the chances of resumption of the composite dialogue that stalled after the 26/11 terror attacks.