Osama, Mulla Omar playing in ISI hands, says Afghan Senate Chairman

New Delhi, Jun 1 (UNI) Chairman of the Senate of Afghanistan Prof Sibghatullah Mojaddedi today claimed that Al Qaeda Chief Osama Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar were playing in the hands of Pakistani Intelligence agency ISI.

These two and also former Afghanistan prime minister Gulbudin Hikmatyar were fully under the control of ISI, Prof Mojaddidi said here when asked by reporters here as to where Osama-Bin Laden was hiding in his country.

The Afghanistan senate Chairman had come here to take part in an international conference on terrorism organised by the United Jama Masjid Forum.

He accused the ISI of engineering acts of terrorism in his country and warned that the whole world would be affected by terror if the agency was not checked.

It is Pakistan which is reposible for all the bloodshed and disturbance in the whole reagion and using the three as its instrument, he said.

Later, speaking at the valedictory session of the conference, he said the ISI was training people to commit acts of terror, to go in for suicide bombings and exporting them to other countries.

He said his country was not against Pakistan as such, but wanted it to control its intelligence agency.

''We have lost so many of our people in the terrorist attacks, while we have never committed any act of terror against anybody. Even during the days of jehad against the Soviet Union, we have never killed a single Russian as killing others is forbidden in Islam,'' he said.

Prof Mojaddedi also sought to correct a previous speaker who said that the call for Jehad against the West came from Afghanistan.

He said Jehad was declared against the Soviet Union as it had commmitted agression against his country without any fault of theirs. ''I was the first to give a call for jehad against Soviet Union from the BBC platform,'' he added ''In that war, we lost two million people, which included 180 pf my relatives,'' he said.

He claimed that the present government in Afghanistan had become successful in controlling Taliban, and people owing allegiance to the outfit and also to the mentality represented by it had been reduced to just 10 per cent of their previous strength.

''We have formed a reconciliation forum and made about 7000 misguided people to lay their weapons and lead a civil life, '' said Prof Mujaddedi.

The Afghan leader, quoting verses from Qur'an, said Islam totally rejected terrorism, and called upon religious leaders to make people aware about the true teachings of Islam.

UNI NAZ SNG SK VC1910