Muzaffarabad/New Delhi: The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) jehadi outfit through its banned frontal organisation the Jama'at-ud-Dawaah (JuD) on Thursday vowed to revert to the "Kashmir freedom cause" and continue supporting a separatist campaign in the insurgency-riven state of Jammu and Kashmir.
It was announced at an anti-India jehadi rally organised to express "solidarity with Kashmir" in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) by the JuD, where United Jehad Council chief Syed Salahuddin said they would settle for "nothing less than complete freedom of Kashmir from India".
Leaders of radical jehadi groups and terror outfits based in POK participated in the rally, which was attended by thousands of people, including men and women, eye witnesses report.
Among those who attended the rally were top jehadi leaders, including JuD leader Abdul Rehman Makki and other militant commanders.
The rally in POK’s capital Muzaffarabad came amid reports that India has sent a formal proposal to Pakistan for talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries, stressing that it will carry on these discussions with "an open and positive mind".
But New Delhi was also keeping a close watch on the meeting 'Yakjehti-e-Kashmir' (Solidarity with Kashmir) the JuD held after lying low for over a year following the Mumbai terror attacks. The 26/11 attacks that India blamed on LeT left 166 people dead.
The Thursday gathering comes a day before Pakistan is to observe the annual Kashmir Solidarity Day Feb 5. Pakistan has announced Friday as a public holiday for "continued support to the Kashmir struggle".
Salahuddin said India was "leaving no choice except for jehad in Kashmir as previous experiment of dialogue had proved to be a complete failure".
He said that "jehad will change the entire geo-political structure of the sub continent, as it will also free much-oppressed Indian Muslims", according to Online news agency of Pakistan.
He however said he was ready for "serious and conducive dialogue, with real-time results".
JuD's chief of POK chapter Abdul Aziz Alvi addressed the gathering and vowed to continue supporting "the freedom movement in Kashmir".
"Alvi in his emotional speech said that JuD will support at every cost the Kashmir cause to achieve Kashmiris' birth right of self-determination according to the United Nations resolutions," Jahanzeb Khan, one of the participants in the rally, said.
The meeting is seen as the LeT's stepped up approach to shift its focus back on Jammu and Kashmir.
LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, blamed by India as one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks, is expected to address a similar rally in Islamabad on Friday.
Many outfits have announced demonstrations and rallies in several cities and towns of Pakistan, according to official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency.
"As a mark of respect to the struggle of Kashmiris, one-minute silence would be observed, bringing all rail and road traffic across the country to a standstill," APP reported.
Former chief of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Hamid Gul, who was also an invitee to the Muzaffarabad conference, said the Pakistan government was aware about the jehadi rally.
Gul rejected New Delhi's apprehensions about the rally.
"If India is feeling unhappy, let them (be)," Gul told a private television news channel. He said the meeting was "an important human cause" and India should "face the bitter truth in Kashmir".
Denying that the JuD, banned by the UN, was a terror outfit, Gul said: "India and Pakistan should make clear the distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters."
The meeting also comes as foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are likely to meet after Home Minister P Chidambaram's expected visit to Islamabad later this month, brightening the chances of resumption of the composite dialogue that stalled after the 26/11 terror attacks.
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