HuM, JeM, LeT have 'no business to be in America': USA

[Adux]

HuM, JeM, LeT have 'no business to be in America': USA




The Bush administration has designated three Pakistan-based terrorist groups - Harkat ul-Mujaheddin (HuM), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), as "Foreign terrorist organisations", prohibiting US residents from extending material support to them.

This also denies individuals representing these groups from entering or doing business in the US.

In all 42 groups, active in different parts of the world, figure in the list and its purpose is to identify and isolate these groups by encouraging friends and allies of the US to deter its citizens from supporting them, says the US State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2006, released in Washington on Monday.

Groups of Concern

The Department has designated another five organisations as "Groups of Concern".

These include the Communist Party of India (Maoist), United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), Harkat-ul-Jihad-I-Islami (HUJI), Hizbul Mujahedin (HM) and Jamaat-ul-Mujaheddin (JUM).

The report says Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin (HUM), an Islamic terrorist group based in Pakistan, is politically aligned with the radical political party Jamaat Ulema-i-Islam's Fazlur Rehman faction (JUI-F), and operates primarily in Jammu and Kashmir.

"As in previous years," the US document points out, terrorists staged hundreds of attacks on people and property in India.

The most prominent terrorist groups were extremists operating in Jammu and Kashmir, Maoists operating in the "Naxalite belt" in eastern, southern and central India and ethno-linguistic nationalists in the north-east.

It notes that the Indian government blamed two prominent Pakistan-based organisations, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), for several attacks in major Indian cities.

It also records Indian officials' complaint that terrorist infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir had increased in 2006.

The report talks of the continued expansion in the cooperation between the US and India in the field of counter terrorism.

In October, a company of US Marines travelled to India for counterterrorism exercises with the Indian Army. In September, the Indian Army sent a company to Hawaii to train with the US Army Pacific command.

In August, two Indian Army experts went to Hawaii to observe a US military exercise.

The US-India Counterterrorism Joint Working Group (CTJWG) has met eight times since its creation in 2000. India also participated in CTJWGs with 15 other countries, and in multilateral CTJWGs with the EU, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.

The Indian government supported ongoing US investigations into cases involving American citizens who were victims of terrorism.

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