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SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 36, March 24, 2003
Data and
assessments from SAIR can be freely published in any form
with credit to the South Asia Intelligence Review of the
South Asia Terrorism Portal
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The Iraq War and
the 'Deluge of Terror'
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict
Management
As the war
in Iraq intensifies, reports of 'peace demonstrations' as
well as more explicitly anti-US and Islamist extremist protests
accumulate across South Asia. These have been given great
prominence in the media and have fed Western apprehensions
that the Iraqi campaign will give rise to new armies of
anti-US, anti-West, Islamist extremist terrorists, and a
radical escalation of terrorism in the foreseeable future,
as Muslims express their 'anger' against America's 'unjust
war'.
It is significant that the intensity, spread and participation
in these demonstrations across South Asia, and even in Pakistan
and Bangladesh, has been muted, and does not compare with
the violence in, for instance, Cairo, Bahrain or even Brussels.
More significantly, the scale of protests witnessed in much
of Europe has been immensely greater - in UK, for instance,
an anti-war demonstration in February brought together an
unprecedented one million protestors, and demonstrations
on March 22 again mobilized an estimated 200,000 - 400,000
protestors. The most significant and inflammatory of the
protests in South Asia have been in Pakistan, particularly
in areas currently under the political domination of the
fundamentalist and pro-Taliban Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA),
including Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province
- areas that have been characterized by substantial movement
of pro-al Qaeda elements as well as suspected areas of major
re-location of al Qaeda and Taliban cadres. But even the
MMA's 'million march' could put together only 'several thousand
protestors'. It was on Sunday, March 23, in Karachi - the
Pakistani Port city worst afflicted by sectarian and terrorist
violence - that the 'largest' of such protests took place,
with the participation of an estimated 70,000 protestors.
It is useful to note that a demonstration of this size,
by South Asian standards - a region that often witnesses
million-plus political gatherings and demonstrations - is
at best, minor. There have also been small, though provocative,
meetings, with substantial inflammatory rhetoric, at various
locations in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. In addition, sermons
after Friday prayers in some mosques across the region have
tended to focus adversely on the US led war, and at least
some of these have contained incendiary calls for violence
against the US and Western allies.
The anti-war demonstrations have, however, gone well beyond
the Islamist extremist / fundamentalist constituency in
South Asia, as in much of the world. But this represents
nothing more than the broad political uncertainty and ambivalence
over the morality and legitimacy of the US led campaign,
concerns that have been widely expressed even among the
people in the countries that constitute the primary Coalition
partners - USA, UK and Australia. These wider demonstrations
have articulated apprehensions about, but do not, in any
measure reflect or impact on, the potential for escalated
terrorist action as a 'reaction' to the Iraq War.
Apprehensions of a 'deluge of terror' in the wake of the
Iraq campaign are, however, substantially misplaced and
are located in a misunderstanding of the nature of terrorism
in general, and of Islamist extremist terrorism, in particular.
The defeat of Saddam Hussein cannot, on detached assessment,
be expected to provoke any great rise in anti-US terrorism
sourced in South Asia. Indeed, the very opposite holds true,
and evidence of US weakness and vulnerabilities, either
during the Coalition campaign in Iraq, or in general, would
tend to encourage greater militant opportunism, particularly
among the communities and countries where extremist Islamist
mobilisation has already reached an advanced stage, with
Pakistan and Bangladesh as the core areas of such risk in
this region.
This does not, however, exclude the possibilities of opportunistic
strikes against Western targets during or after the Iraq
campaign. Such strikes would exploit the existing pool and
potential of trained terrorists, but do not significantly
reflect any dramatic increase in this pool, or in recruitment
to terrorist ranks. The fact is, terrorists strike when
and where they have the capacity to strike, and they strike
at the maximal level of destructive force available to them.
That is the nature of terrorism. War or no war in Iraq,
the trajectory of terrorism will be defined by the capacities
of its executors.
These capacities do not depend on any pool of shared 'Muslim
grievances' - real or imagined. A sufficient - indeed inexhaustible
- pool of such grievances already exists and the actual
transformation of these into terrorist cadres and actions
depends on two specific variables: the intensity and success
of the process of terrorist mobilisation, including their
demonstrable abilities to strike critical targets and to
instil a sense of confidence and imminent victory in their
sympathetic constituency; and, conversely, the success and
effectiveness, or otherwise, of the world's counter-terrorism
responses. In the post 9/11 phase, the incidence of international
terrorism has shown declining trends, not because the pool
of Muslim resentment suddenly contracted or evaporated,
but rather because increased, though still inadequate and
selective, international cooperation in counter-terrorism
campaigns severely circumscribed the capacities of terrorists
to operate and strike. This was also substantially a consequence
of international pressure on supporters and state sponsors
of terrorism, which limited the impunity with which such
entities could extended assistance in terms of safe havens,
infrastructure and opportunities for terrorist recruitment,
training, finance and weapons' supplies.
Fears of a radical 'intensification' of Islamist extremist
terrorism located in this region in the wake of the war
in Iraq are, consequently, mistaken. The threats emanating
from extremist factions in Pakistan and Bangladesh - and
strongly projected by the state apparatus in Pakistan as
justification for the continued dictatorship in that country
- are no more than threats.
It is useful, in this context, to recall the words of a
Pakistan Army Brigadier, S.K. Malik, who elaborated on his
county's philosophy of terrorism in his book, The Islamic
Concept of War - a book that includes an authoritative
foreword by the then Pakistan President, General Zia-ul-Haq:
"Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only
a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror
into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is
left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and
the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing
decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision
we wish to impose upon him."
If the fanatics of the MMA and of the array of extremist
and terrorist organisations operating out of Pakistan, or
their affiliates in Bangladesh, India and elsewhere, had
the power to strike and destroy America or its allies, they
would already have done it. And if they are ever able to
convince themselves that they do possess such power, it
is certain that they would use it. The simple reason why
they do not do so is because they lack this power, and are
aware of this deficiency. It is precisely this deficit that
will ensure that, even after the Iraq war, they will continue
with the excesses of their rhetoric, but will fail to escalate
their campaign against US and Western targets. The essence
of this failure is nothing more than the lack of the necessary
capacity. To the extent that they are able to secure this
capacity, they would target the US even if America became
the most pacific nation in the world. The Islamist terrorist
agenda is more inflexible than most of us imagine, and its
ends are defined, not in terms of the transient political
parameters of the discourse of international relations,
but by a perspective rooted in religious absolutisms that
will endure long after the reverberations of the crises
of transition in Afghanistan or in Iraq have come to an
end.
J&K: Jehadis
Strike as Kashmir Recedes from Global Focus
Kanchan Lakshman
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant
Editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution
Even as global
attention remains focused on the war on Iraq, the trajectory
of Jehadi terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is
beginning to soar. Two dramatic incidents in the space of
12 hours on Sunday, March 23, 2003, demonstrate the strengthening
trends to escalation of terrorism in the State. Former Hizb-ul-Mujahideen
(HM)
Salar-e-Ala or chief commander, Abdul Majeed Dar, was shot
dead by unidentified gunmen in the Noor Bagh area of Sopore
township in north Kashmir when two gun-wielding youth barged
into his ancestral house and fired indiscriminately, killing
Dar on the spot and critically injuring his mother and sister.
In the second incident, at least 24 Kashmiri Pandits were
killed at the Nandimarg village near Shopian in the Pulwama
district around midnight. The terrorists first snatched
the policemen's weapons and later fired indiscriminately
on the Pandits. The dead included 11 women and two children.
According to preliminary reports, approximately 25 heavily-armed
terrorists dressed in police uniforms descended on the tiny
village, 75 km from the capital city of Srinagar, and fired
indiscriminately on the unarmed Pandits.
Two terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility
for Dar's killing: the hitherto little-known, 'Save Kashmir
Movement', believed to be a front of the Al Umar Mujahiddeen,
while claiming responsibility, labeled Dar as "an informant
of Indian agencies" and "an enemy of the Kashmiri people."
Separately, a person describing himself as the spokesperson
of Al Nasireen, another obscure group, in a message to a
local news agency, said that activists of his group killed
Dar for his 'anti-movement activities'. Meanwhile, another
person claiming to be a spokesperson for the HM called up
the news agency and condemned Dar's killing. Dar had been
a front ranking terrorist in the HM before his 'expulsion'
in May 2002. In his capacity as 'deputy supreme commander',
'Military adviser' and 'chief commander of operations',
Dar played a significant role in the indoctrination, recruitment,
launching and training of Hizb cadres. Reports suggest that,
while managing the Hizb training camps in Pakistan, he was
the only Kashmiri terrorist who had direct access to Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharief as also General Pervez Musharraf.
Dar's killing is the culmination of an almost three-year
old battle for supremacy being waged by his followers against
the faction led by Syed Salahuddin, the HM 'supreme commander'
and chief of the 14-member United Jehad Council (UJC),
a conglomerate of Pakistan-based terrorist organisations.
Abdul Majeed Dar came into prominence when he returned from
Pakistan three years ago to announce a unilateral cease-fire
with Indian security forces on July 24, 2000. On August
3, 2000, a high-level official team of the Government of
India, headed by the then Union Home Secretary Kamal Pande,
visited Srinagar and conducted a meeting with Dar and his
associates at the Nehru Guest House. However, on August
8, 2000, Syed Salahuddin 'withdrew' the cease-fire at a
Press Conference in Islamabad. The Dar initiated 'peace
talks' led to dissent within the Hizb, with the Pakistani
ranks fearing that an effective process of negotiations
may actually be established, to the detriment of Pakistani
interests. Subsequently, a war for supremacy ensued within
the HM, and a distinctive 'bimodal' operating structure
emerged, with separate factions owing allegiance to Dar
and Salahuddin. Since the ill-fated peace talks, followers
of Salahuddin - who operates from Pakistan - and Majeed
Dar, who remained 'underground' in the Kashmir Valley, have
had a series of internecine clashes. In November 2002, two
Salahuddin loyalists were killed in factional conflict reported
at the Mirpur and Tarbela camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir
(PoK). The Hizb leadership in Pakistan has also issued statements
claiming Dar's alleged alignment with Indian intelligence
agencies. Reports suggest that Dar had been disillusioned
with the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and
its military leadership. Dar was 'suspended' by the Salahuddin
faction and replaced by Saiful Islam as the Hizb 'chief
commander of operations' in Kashmir, on May 4, 2002. Two
of his close associates, Assad Yazdani and Zaffar Abdul
Fatah, were also 'removed' from positions of command. Again,
on May 9, 2002, the Hizb leadership expelled another two
'divisional commanders' in south Kashmir. Even as Dar and
his associates were accused of assisting Indian security
forces, many of his loyalists were killed by cadres of the
Salahuddin group. Faced with Dar's rising popularity within
the HM ranks, Salahuddin and the ISI had, in the recent
months, initiated several moves to marginalize and target
Dar and his associates in the terrorist ensemble.
The Salahuddin's faction is also widely believed to have
carried out the January 31, 2003 killing of the editor of
News and Feature Alliance (NAFA), Parvaz Mohammad
Sultan, in Srinagar. NAFA had been prominently reporting
on the internal feud in the HM for the preceding two weeks
prior to Sultan's killing. The NAFA reports had mentioned
that the Valley-based faction led by Dar had 'overthrown'
the Salahuddin faction.
Within hours of Majeed Dar's murder, sources indicate that
clashes broke out at HM camps in PoK between the slain leader's
followers and the faction led by Salahuddin. Violent confrontations
are believed to have taken place at camps in Kotli, Mirpur,
Oggi, Jungal-Mangal, Haripur and Gadhi-Dupatta. Preliminary
reports indicate that Salahuddin was fidgety over the prospect
of an imminent test of strength in the camps. Details of
casualties and the outcome of these clashes were still not
available at the time of this report.
The brief lull in Jehadi violence in J&K over the
December - February period was tactical, primarily the result
of adverse weather conditions along the passes on the border.
However, Chief of Army Staff, General N.C. Vij, on March
23, 2003, had stated that there would be a spurt in infiltration
into J&K from across the border after the snow started melting,
and this has been borne out by trends in March itself -
much earlier than had been usual in preceding years. Infiltration
along the Indo-Pakistan Line of Control (LoC) and border
has increased with the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)
stepping up their activities in the State. As a result,
the entire Jammu region, along with some areas in Srinagar,
Anantnag, Budgam, Pulwama, Baramulla and Kupwara districts
have been declared 'disturbed areas'. Reports indicate that
security forces are finding some difficulty in countering
the renewed threat perception after the Special Operations
Group (SOG) of the J&K Police was disbanded by the Mufti
Mohammad Sayeed Government.
The massacre of Pandits is a continuation of the process
of ethnic
cleansing launched in January 1990 by Pakistan-backed
terrorists. Such incidents are clearly intended to block
the proclaimed State Government policy to facilitate a return
of the Pandits to their homeland and may, in fact, lead
to a further exodus of Pandits from the Valley, as well
as from Muslim dominated areas in the Jammu region. Past
incidents have shown that the Hindus who have stayed back
in the Valley are a priority target for the terrorists,
who lay claims to Kashmir as a 'Muslim land'. The Pulwama
massacre is a setback for Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad
Sayeed, who had made the 'safe return' of the Pandits a
primary plank of his campaign during the September-October
2002 Elections. The State Government had recently drawn
up plans to settle the Pandits around the shrine at the
holy spring at Tullamullah in Srinagar district and Mattan
in the Anantnag district, though the Pandits had displayed
little enthusiasm for the plan under the prevailing security
situation in the Valley. Their reluctance can only multiply
manifold after Sunday night's brutal massacre.
There has been much talk of the revival of the 'peace process'
by the Union Government [K.P.S.
Gill, "J&K: The Opportunities of Another Peace Process",
SAIR 1.34], after the appointment of a new interlocutor
charged with initiating negotiations with various political
entities in J&K, as well as the new Chief Minister's enthusiasm
for a 'political solution' to the violence in the State.
But the mounting violence of the past three weeks demonstrates
again - as has been repeatedly established in the past -
that a search for solutions for the problems of J&K cannot,
in fact, be located in J&K. Such a solution will, indeed,
remain elusive until the infrastructure of terrorism located
in Pakistan, and supported by the state structure in Pakistan,
is conclusively and irrevocably dismantled and destroyed.
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Weekly Fatalities: Major conflicts
in South Asia
March 17-23, 2003
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Civilian
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Security
Force Personnel
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Terrorist
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Total
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BANGLADESH
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0
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0
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1
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1
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INDIA
|
45
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9
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35
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89
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Assam
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0
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0
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2
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2
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Bihar
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2
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0
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0
|
2
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Jammu &
Kashmir
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37
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8
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33
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78
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Left-wing
Extremism
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2
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1
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0
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3
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Uttar Pradesh
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4
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0
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0
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4
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SRI LANKA
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17
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0
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0
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17
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* Provisional
data compiled from English language media sources.
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INDIA
Terrorists
massacre 24 Pandits in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir:
An estimated 24 Kashmiri Pandits (descendents
of Brahmin priests), including 11 women and
two children, were massacred by terrorists at
the Nandimarg village near Shopian in Pulwama
district in the night of March 23. According
to official sources, approximately 25 heavily
armed terrorists dressed in police uniforms
came to the village, 75 kilometres from Srinagar
and disarmed the policemen guarding the Pandits.
Later, they fired indiscriminately killing 24
Pandits on the spot. Times
of India, March 24, 2003
Former Hizb-ul-Mujahideen 'chief commander'
killed in Sopore, J&K: Former 'chief commander
of operations' of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM),
Abdul Majeed Dar, was killed by two unidentified
gunmen at his home in the Noor Bagh area of
Sopore on March 23, 2003. His mother and sister
were also injured during the incident. Two terrorist
groups, the 'Save Kashmir Movement' and Al Nasireen
have, in separate statements, claimed responsibility
for the killing. Dar had been a front ranking
terrorist before his 'expulsion' in May 2002
by the Pakistan-based HM chief Syed Salahuddin.
Daily
Excelsior, March 24, 2003.
UAE deports 1993-Mumbai blasts accused Umar
Dossa: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on
March 19, 2003, deported Mustaffa Mohammed Umar
Dossa alias Majnu Sheth, a key accused in the
1993-Mumbai serial blasts. He was arrested on
arrival at the Delhi airport by the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Umar, a close
associate of Pakistan-based Mafia don Dawood
Ibrahim, is accused of supplying arms and ammunition
used in the blasts. He is the brother of Mohammed
Dossa, another key accused in the 1993 blasts,
who had fled the country immediately after the
blasts. Umar's role in the blasts came to light
in year 1997 when the CBI arrested and interrogated
Saleem Minga alias Saleem Kutta, another of
those accused in the Mumbai serial blasts case.
Times
of India, March 20, 2003.
10 Hizb terrorists killed in Jammu and Kashmir:
Security forces (SFs) killed six terrorists
of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), including a
'section commander', in an encounter in Chatar
Gali, Basti area, Doda district, on March 17,
2003. Official sources said that the army and
police carried out a joint search operation
in Chatar Gali after securing information that
six terrorists were present at a hideout. After
a two hour-long operation, SFs killed all six
of them and also destroyed the hideout. Separately,
four HM terrorists and one SF personnel were
killed in an encounter that ensued after a search
operation in the forests of Bakyar, Handwara
area. Daily
Excelsior, March 18, 2003.
NEPAL
Maoist
insurgents demand release of five top leaders
before peace talks: Setting preconditions
for peace talks to commence, the Maoist insurgents
asked the government to set free at least five
central-level leaders and withdraw the cases
filed at the Patan Appellate Court against many
Maoists, including top leaders Prachanda and
Baburam Bhattarai, media reports said on March
22, 2003. "The talks would commence immediately
once the government fulfils these demands,"
said Krishna Bahadur Mahara, a member of the
Maoist negotiation team. The central-level leaders
whose release has been demanded are Krishna
Dhoj Khadka, Rekha Sharma, Mumaram Khanal, Rabindra
Shrestha and Bam Dev Chhettri. Reports added
that the government has indicated that they
would soon be released. Nepal
News, March 22, 2003.
SRI LANKA
Foreign trawler
sunk off Mullaithivu; LTTE denies involvement: Suspected
Sea Tigers cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
on March 20, 2003, sunk a Chinese fishing trawler near Mullaithivu.
However, the number of fishermen either killed, missing or rescued,
is uncertain. Some reports claimed that 17 fishermen were missing
and might be dead, while another said 16 were rescued. Reports
on March 24 said the bodies of three fishermen were recovered.
The LTTE denied sinking the trawler and said its boats do not
operate in the area, but the Sri Lanka Navy does, to enforce
the naval blockade against the LTTE. The Sri Lanka Monitoring
Mission (SLMM) has sent two separate teams to investigate the
incident and a report is awaited. Daily
News, March 24, 2003; March 22; Tamil
Net, March 21, 2003.
Government, LTTE discuss core political issues at sixth round
of peace talks: The government and the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) broke fresh ground at the sixth round
of peace talks on March 20, 2003, at Hakone, Japan, and discussed
core issues. The fiscal aspect of power sharing between the
centre and the units was discussed, in the main, and preliminary
discussions on the political aspects of power sharing were also
initiated. "We are paying our attention on the matter of the
availability of resources to the units, and how well these resources
can be raised within various models", government chief negotiator
and Minister G.L. Peiris said. Fiscal imbalances and inequality
would be further discussed at the succeeding rounds of talks,
Peiris said. Tamil
Net, March 21, 2003.
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The South
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terrorism, insurgencies and sub-conventional warfare,
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on related economic, political, and social issues, in
the South Asian region.
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South
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