Gleanings from the Media - USA Concedes KPS' Plight.

According to a dispatch filed by Mr. C K. Arora, Times of India correspondent in Washington, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Ms. Robin Raphel, has urged the Indo American Kashmir Forum (IAKF), an organisation of US-based Kashmiri Pandits, to be a "a voice for constructive dialogue between India and Pakistan and between the government of India and people of Jammu and Kashmir".

In reply to a letter of IAF's Director for Political Affairs, Mr. V.K. Sazawal, she said, "The task of preserving a distinctive Pandit identity is. closely linked to that of finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir dispute".

As she had indicated in her Congressional testimony last month, Ms. Raphel said the upcoming human rights report of the State Department would make mention of the Pandit Community, rectifying an omission in previous reports.

Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman Sherrod Brown has drawn the attention of US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck to the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits living in refugee camps in Jammu. "As refugees in their own homeland, they are now relegated to squalid camps that lack basic necessities. Their predicament truly is dire and the problems they face are formidable. There is a growing sense of unease, even alarm, among the Pandits that they have been forgotten by the rest of the world", Mr. Brown said.

IAKF President Mr. Kanhya L. Kaul, in a statement, welcomed Home Minister S.B. Chavan's action in inviting last week in Delhi a delegation of Kashmiri Pandits for a political dialogue. He added:

"It is our belief that it is the first of the many sessions to come as our community has as much right to the valley as the Kashmiri Muslims and that no settlement of the Kashmir issue is complete and acceptable which does not meet the aspirations and the needs of the Pandit community to return and live in the Valley as first class Indian citizens with full rights and under the protection of the Indian Constitution in their homeland in the Valley".

DISCLAIMER:

The views expressed in the Article above are Abhijit Chakravertty’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article.

Courtesy:  September 1996 Koshur Samachar