Mr. Speaker, it is with a sense of disappointment and concern that I rise tonight to respond to a misguided initiative that some of my colleagues in this House are involved with.  Several Members of Congress have attached their names to a letter to President Clinton that makes some outrageous and false charges about recent events in India.  I believe that these claims cannot go unchallenged.

The letter repeats the malicious claim that the massacre of 36 Sikh villagers in Chittsinghpora, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, was the work of Indian security forces.  That massacre occurred on March 20, at the beginning of President Clinton's historic trip to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.  I had the opportunity to take part in the President's trip to South Asia, and this tragic and shocking massacre did cast a shadow over the trip.  It left a deep sense of sadness among all of us in the American delegation, and among all of the people of India that we encountered.  President Clinton condemned the attack in the strongest terms.

Less than a week after the attack, Indian investigating agencies in Jammu and Kashmir made an arrest in the case, apprehending one Yakub Wagey, a terrorist belonging to the Hizbul-Mujahideen.  Mr. Wagey, a resident of Chittsinghpora, revealed that the massacre was the work of a group of 16 to 17 terrorists, including six militants of Hizbul-Mujahideen and 11 to 12 foreign mercenaries owing allegiance to Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).  Both of these terrorist organizations are on the long list of terrorist organizations that receive support from Pakistan.

This terrible incident was the first large-scale attack against the Sikh community in Jammu and Kashmir, but it is consistent with the ongoing terrorist campaign that has claimed the lives of thousands of peaceful civilians in that state.  This terrorist campaign has repeatedly and convincingly been linked to elements operating within Pakistan, often with the direct or indirect support of Pakistan's government.  As I discussed in this Chamber earlier this week, the Pakistani-supported terrorist campaign has ethnically cleansed Jammu and Kashmir of its indigenous Hindu community, the Kashmiri Pandits.  The terrorists have also sought to clear out members of other Muslim sects, or those Muslims who cooperate with the lawful Indian authorities of the state.  Now, with this incident, the ethnic cleansing campaign has turned on the Sikhs.

It's no coincidence that this massacre took place during President Clinton's visit to South Asia.  I believe that these terrorist groups, and their supporters in Pakistan, wanted an incident that would draw attention to the Kashmir issue.  Pakistan has been seeking to internationalize this conflict for years.  What better time to perpetrate a high-profile atrocity like this than when the President of the United States is in the region, with all of the attendant diplomatic and media attention that such a visit brings with it?

Which makes the claim that India was behind the massacre all the more absurd.  At a time when India was before the world stage, what possible motive would there be for such an ugly incident to detract from all of the positive publicity India was seeking to generate?  It doesn't make sense.

Indeed, Mr. Speaker, this allegation really makes no sense at all when you look at the records of the two South Asian neighbors, India and Pakistan.  India is a secular, pluralistic democracy that seeks to promote civil and human rights for all of its many ethnic, linguistic and religious communities.  Pakistan is a military dictatorship that has a long record of fomenting instability and violence in Kashmir while denying human and civil rights at home.

One of the motives behind trying to link India to the attack against the Sikh villagers in Kashmir is to try to generate separatist sentiment among India's Sikh community.  Indeed, I understand that an organization based here in this country that seeks to promote the Sikh separatist cause has lent its support to the letter circulating on Capitol Hill.  The reality is that, in India's state of Punjab, where the Sikhs constitute a majority, Mr. Prakash Singh Badal, who happens to be a Sikh, has been elected as Chief Minister of the state (sort of analogous to the post of Governor in a U.S. state).  The predominantly Sikh Akali Dal Party holds a majority in the state's Legislature.  The state government has set up a human rights commission whose primary purpose is to investigate claims of human rights abuses by government security forces - just as India has done on the national level.  The democratically-elected Sikh political leaders in Punjab are not buying the claims of Indian government responsibility for the atrocity that took place in Kashmir this past March.

Mr. Speaker, India's democratically-elected leaders will admit that there have been abuses by security forces.  There is also violence between various religious and ethnic communities, which is not officially condoned.  In both cases, India has sought to crack down on these kinds of acts in an honest and effective way that makes it a model among the nations of Asia and throughout the developing world.  The call by some of my colleagues to declare India a terrorist nation is completely unreasonable.  Indeed, following from the President's recent trip, cooperation against terrorism is one of the major areas of U.S.-India bilateral cooperation.  The idea of cutting off aid to India - an approach that has repeatedly been tried and failed - is even more absurd, seeking to send a message by cutting vital nutrition and health care programs for children and low-income families.