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Lashkar-e-Jhangvi a terrorist organisation: Powell

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington Jan. 31. The Bush administration has added the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to the State Department's List of Foreign Terrorist Organisations and to those outfits covered under an Executive Order.

The U.S. called on Islamabad to shut this group down. "The Government of Pakistan has already designated the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi a terrorist organisation and we look forward to working with Pakistani authorities to shut this group down'', the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said in a statement.

"By designating this group as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and publishing that decision today in the Federal Register, we implement the provisions of the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,'' Gen. Powell said.

By law it is illegal for persons in the U.S. or subjects in the jurisdiction of the U.S. to provide any form of material support to designated terrorist groups; American financial institutions are required to block assets held by the terror outfits; and the U.S. will deny visas to any representative of this group.

"I made this decision in consultation with the Attorney-General and the Secretary of the Treasury after an exhaustive review of the group's violent activities,'' he said.

According to Gen Powell's statement, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a "violent'' Sunni Muslim group which is located in Pakistan and responsible for a number of deadly attacks, including the January 2002 kidnapping and killing of the reporter of The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl.

"The group has perpetrated bus and church bombings.

It claimed responsibility for the 1997 killing of four American oil workers in Karachi. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi also attempted to assassinate the then Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, in 1999'', Gen. Powell's statement reads.

The designation of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi as a foreign terror organisation came at a time when the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, is winding up his official visit to Washington where he had consultations with senior members of the Bush administration, including the Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

According to the Pakistani embassy, bilateral and regional issues, India-Pakistan relations and the security situation in South Asia with a specific reference to Kashmir figured in Mr. Kasuri's talks with Mr. Cheney.

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