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Vajpayee to take up ISI activities in JK with Sharief

Home Minister L K Advani said Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee would take up the issue of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief when they meet for talks in Colombo on Wednesday.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Advani accused Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency of abetting terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and said it was adopting every possible means to infiltrate foreign militants and mercenaries into the state.

To tackle militancy, the home minister continued, the government has adopted an action plan which includes strengthening the border management. Intensive anti-militancy operations have been undertaken, and security forces and state police have been deployed at strategic places, he said.

He said the internal security scenario in the northern states would be reviewed at a meeting convened on August 18. Similar review meetings had been held with the governments of southern and western states in March.

On Monday, Advani had said that the law and order situation in the country has deteriorated a lot during the past five years.

The home minister said this after a statement about the bus blast in Delhi on Sunday in which two people were killed. A vociferous Opposition was trying to pin the government down on the law and order issue, and wanted a full-fledged discussion on the subject.

But Advani firmly ruled it out saying he did not want to be party in setting a new convention as the House had never discussed the law and order situation in specific states in the past.

UNI

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