India should act tough against terrorists: Farooq

JAMMU - Union New and Renewable Energy Minister and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah Saturday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to act “tough” against terrorists and their sponsors.

“India has the capacity to act tough and it must show itself to be a tough state. It should not yield to terrorists or their demands. It’s not time to repeat mistakes of the past,” Abdullah told media persons after inaugurating a cricket facility here.

He recalled how “India had shown itself to be a soft state when it released five terrorists during the V.P. Singh government and a decade later in Kandahar”.

Abdullah was referring to the release of five Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) militants in December 1989 to get the then union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s youngest daughter, Rubiya Sayeed released.

Again, in December 1999, the Jammu and Kashmir government had released two militants - Maulana Azhar Masood and Mushtaq Zargar - in exchange for passengers and crew of a hijacked Indian airliner. A third militant, Omar Saeed Sheikh was set free from Delhi’s Tihar jail.

Incidentally, Abdullah was chief minister on both occasions.

Regarding the reported presence of Chinese troops in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, as reported by the New York Times recently, he said: “This presence should not worry India”.

“We are capable of dealing with this threat,” he said.