When British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw rattled Home Minister L K Advani this morning by bringing up the death of two Britons in the Gujarat riots, the latter too took up an issue that may have caught Straw off-guard: how the ISI was reportedly using British soil to funnel hawala money to some Hurriyat Conference leaders and a number of militant groups in Jammu & Kashmir. One prominent Hurriyat leader and another of the Dukhtarn-e-Millat were named.One of the top conduits named by Advani was Dr Ayub Thokar, whose passport has been impounded by the Indian High Commission in London but who continues to travel freely on the basis of travel documents supplied by the British government. Advani told Straw that since 2000, crores of rupees sent by the ISI had reached the Valley through Thokar. He is said to be a former secretary general of Islamic Jamait-e-Tulba who in the early 80s moved out of Saudi Arabia.Emerging out of North Block after the 75-minute meeting, Straw described the closed-door session as ‘‘nice and warm’’. Advani, according to sources, hammered home the point that without active support from the Pakistan Army, infiltration could not have continued. He reportedly pointed out that most of the area near the LoC on the Pakistan side had landmines but the militants didn’t suffer any casualties. ‘‘How can this happen without the Pak Army actually guiding the militants through safe zones and pushing them right into Indian territory?’’ he asked Straw. Straw was also told that the Pak Army was training the militants, indicated by the sophisticated weapons, like rocket launchers, now being increasingly used by the militants. Advani said the PoK training camps had been shut down temporarily after the December 13 attack on Parliament but were now ‘‘fully operational’’ once again.The home minister told Straw that militant intercepts indicated that even yesterday’s attack on a CRPF camp at Banihal was carried out by the same outfit — an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Toiba — which was behind the Kaluchak incident.On Gujarat, however, Straw had a few hard words for Advani.In particular, he mentioned the two British nationals who were lynched. Later, Straw said he had demanded punishment to the guilty as well as compensation to the victims’ families.Straw was accompanied by British High Commissioner Rob Young. Home Secretary Kamal Pandey and Intelligence Bureau chief K P Singh also attended the meeting.
