By IANS
Jammu : Cutting across party lines, politicians in Jammu and Kashmir have condemned the assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, terming it as an act of terrorism aimed at snuffing out democracy in the neighbouring country.
While mainstream politicians were unanimous in reading in her assassination a move by terrorists to impact the South Asian region’s political and security situation, separatists saw in it a clear attempt to destabilise Pakistan.
Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack Thursday in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi, where she had addressed a campaign rally.
Expressing shock over the incident, Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said: “The killing of Benazir was not assassination of an individual but of democracy in Pakistan which would impact the politics of the sub-continent.”
He described it as a “serious setback to the return of democracy in Pakistan”.
Azad’s immediate predecessor and the Peoples Democratic Party patron, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, said: “The terrible disaster has not only struck the Bhutto family but the peace-loving people of the whole South Asian region.
“The heinous murder of Benazir Bhutto has not only added another tragic victim to the family, but has left the whole world in general and the people of the sub-continent in particular in great shock and agony.”
The Mufti added the time had come for all the “right-thinking people in the region to take fresh stock of the situation and work together for uprooting the scourge of violence and senseless blood-letting”.
Another former chief minister of the state and patron of the National Conference Farooq Abdullah said the “dangers are too obvious and the time has come when all the people and leaders in Pakistan should launch a united fight against terrorists. This is the only way out.”
Chairman of the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference Syed Ali Shah Geelani condemned the assassination as a “dastardly act”.
Geelani, who is presently in the winter capital Jammu, said this was an act of the forces working to “destabilise Pakistan”.
Events in Pakistan have strong repercussions in Jammu and Kashmir, as the Kashmir valley is divided between the two countries that have fought three wars over the region since 1947.