Author: Tara Shankar Sahay
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: February 8, 2003
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/feb/07tara.htm
The government has refused permission
for Pakistan's participation in the two-day international conference on
terrorism, organised by the Bharatiya Janata Youth Morcha, party chief
Kishan Reddy said on Friday.
He said out of 83 countries that
had been invited, 53 were sending their delegations.
United Nations Secretary General
Kofi Ananan had also been invited, but he has deputed his observer Feodo
Strcevic instead, Reddy said, adding that it was for the first time that
a UN observer is attending a function organised by a political outfit.
Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
will inaugurate the conference on February 10 while his deputy Lal Kishenchand
Advani will address it.
He said Iraq too had been invited,
but its delegation would not be able to attend the conference because of
the current tension prevailing in the region. While South Korea is attending
the conference, its North Korean counterpart is not coming, he said.
According to Reddy, experts on terrorism
like Adam Dolnik and Virginia Mullin [USA] had been invited. Their Indian
counterparts includs supercop K P S Gill, Major General Afsir Karim and
foreign affairs analyst and former Indian high commissioner in Pakistan
G Parthasarathy.
Reddy said Pakistan's 'double role'
in fostering cross-border terrorism [in India] on one hand and participating
in the fight against it on the other would be highlighted.
Significantly, the families of the
victims of the terrorist attack on Indian parliament on December 13 have
also been invited, as were seven members of a family of the victims of
terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, Reddy said.
