29 June 2001	Friday	06 Rabi-us-Saani 1422

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WASHINGTON, June 28: The chairman of the US House of Representatives foreign relations committee, Henry Hyde, has hoped that the issue of Kashmir will one day be resolved on the basis of self-determination, which is the essence of democracy.

Mr Hyde made the remark on Wednesday evening while addressing a get-together with members of the Pakistani American Congress, who were meeting in Washington for their annual convention and went to the Capitol building on The Hill to lobby legislators of the two houses of the US Congress.

Mr Hyde's comment came in the context of his views on the forthcoming Pakistan-India summit, which he hoped would be productive. He said tension between Pakistan and India made the world nervous because both countries had nuclear weapons.

The senior legislator also said he felt Pakistan had not been given enough credit for what it had done for the US during the years of the Cold War.

Mr Hyde's remarks should have helped to lift the spirits of the Pakistan American Congress which had earlier in the day heard Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca give a cooler and more detached assessment of US-Pakistan relations and make some pointed references to the lack of progress in the restoration of democracy in Pakistan.

FOREIGN SECRETARY: The democracy issue was given considerable importance also during Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar's visit to Washington earlier this month. The Pakistan ambassador disclosed at the Pakistani American Congress session in the morning that foreign secretary Inamul Haque would be in Washington in early August at the invitation of US Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman to follow up on the foreign minister's visit and to promote a "positive" Pakistan-US agenda.

The foreign secretary's visit will come after the India-Pakistan summit, and he will be able to give State Department officials Islamabad's assessment of the summit's outcome.

The ambassador, replying to questions from Pakistani American Congress members about the flap created during Mr Sattar's visit by General Pervez Musharraf's decision to become president that had taken the minister as much as the US by surprise, said there had been contacts with US officials subsequent to that, "and I hope we can go past that".

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