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'It is now or never'

Kashmiri Pandits in the United States have urged the Clinton administration to place Pakistan on its 'terrorist watch list' if Islamabad-backed militant groups like the Harkat-ul Ansar do not cease their attacks against the minority Pandit community in Jammu and Kashmir.

The demand was made in a letter their organisation, the Indo-American Kashmir Forum, sent to US Ambassador in Pakistan Thomas W Simons. Copies of the letter were made available in Washington.

Forum president Dr Vijay Sazawal and Professor K N Pandita (of the Friends of Kashmir, a Jammu-based organisation), who wrote the letter, later met the head of the U S delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission Nancy Rubin and urged that the US should declare as ''terrorist organisations'' all militant groups operating in Kashmir, particularly those that receive open governmental and public support from Pakistan.

They said Rubin promised to get in touch with the US ambassadors in India (Richard Celeste), Pakistan (Simons) and at the U N (Bill Richardson) to convey the sentiments of the Pandits with a request to follow it up with the governments concerned.

Democratic Congressman Sherrod Brown, who drew the Clinton administration's attention to the plight of the Pandits in a letter to Rubin, said the fact that Pandits remained in exile within their own country was truly shocking as were the conditions in which they were forced to live.

''The state department's own human rights report has previously recognised the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits and we must not turn our backs on them now,'' he added.

Dr Sazawal had raised the issue with the UNHRC in Geneva. In a speech there, on 'Violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms', he made an appeal to the international community 'to save the Pandit culture and race from extinction that is bound to happen if this august body does not take a strong stand on Kashmir.'

''Islamic insurgents in Kashmir, who portray themselves as freedom fighters when in fact they are terrorists bent on turning Kashmir into an Islamic state, must be stopped from carrying out their nefarious designs,'' he said.

''For Pandits, every day without improvement in their fate is a day less in their history,'' he said, adding. ''I appeal for justice and the survival of Kashmiri Pandits. It is now or never.''

UNI

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