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Advani to brief Parliament today

By Our New Delhi Bureau

NEW DELHI July 14. As India pointed the finger at Pakistan for the latest terrorist carnage in Jammu last evening, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) met here to review the situation.

The Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, who flew to Jammu this afternoon for an "on-the-spot'' assessment after the CCS meeting, said the Government would inform Parliament tomorrow of its view on the killings and its implications. Both in New Delhi and in Jammu, the Deputy Prime Minister said the Government would assess the situation after his visit to Jammu and take Parliament into confidence.

On his return to New Delhi from Jammu, Mr. Advani briefed the Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, about his findings on the situation and the mood of the people.

Speaking to correspondents after a two-hour meeting of the CCS at the Prime Minister's official residence, Mr. Advani said the Cabinet Committee had strongly condemned last evening's incident. He described the latest killings as the second "bhayanak (horrendous)'' attack after the May 14 Kaluchak massacre.

Mr. Advani said that as per information available here, among the 27 killed in the attack were 13 women and a child and most of them were poor labourers. An investigation into the incident was on.

Among those who attended the meeting were the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, the Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, K.C. Pant, the Cabinet Secretary, T.R. Prasad, intelligence chiefs and senior bureaucrats. The Minister of State for Home, I.D. Swami, said separately that the Lashkar-i-Taiba or the Jaish-i-Muhammad could be behind the incident.

Straw expresses shock

Going by the pattern of the killings, the sources pointed the finger at Pakistan, though Mr. Sinha, in a conversation with the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said investigations into the incident were on.

Mr. Straw, who will be in New Delhi on July 19, telephoned Mr. Sinha and "conveyed his deep shock and outrage'' on the terrorist attack. The British Minister inquired about the identity of the attackers.

Mr. Sinha, in turn, informed his British counterpart that nobody had taken responsibility for the terrorist attack — a pattern seen in the latest killings as well.

In a separate statement issued in London, Mr. Straw said he was "horrified by this attack on innocent civilians. Terrorism — be it in Jammu & Kashmir, or anywhere else — only serves to renew the determination of the free world to defeat this evil .... my thoughts are with the families and friends of those who suffered''.

Meantime, official sources said the latest terrorist attack had dealt a "body blow'' to any process of rapprochement between India and Pakistan in the near future. The relative lull in India-Pakistan relations, they said, had been shattered. The sources said the killings only confirmed the statement of Mr. Sinha on Saturday that Pakistan had not taken any tangible steps to end infiltration.

If Pakistan was expecting that India would announce any fresh initiative to resume a possible dialogue, then the latest killings could prove to be a major disincentive to such a process.

New Delhi, the sources said, would use the visits of both Mr. Straw and the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to pressure Pakistan to end the scourge of terrorism.

Both the Straw and Powell visits would provide an occasion for New Delhi to renew its concerns about law and order in Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan's role in fomenting trouble there.

The issue of "verification'' of infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC) remained a live issue and may well figure in the discussions with the high-profile visitors from London and Washington.

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