WASHINGTON, APRIL 16: US President Bill Clinton has said the massacre of 35 Sikhs in Chattisinghpura in Jammu and Kashmir on March 20 was carried out because he was visiting India and was perpetrated by those who don't want the turmoil in the State to be eased."I'm sure they were murdered because I was there. Those people lost their lives because I went to India and Pakistan," he said during a fund-raising luncheon for Georgia's Democratic representative Cynthia Mckinney at Atlanta on Friday."The people who don't want the turmoil to be eased used my trip there as a pretext to highlight the difficulties. And somebody, we do not know who, killed perfectly innocent people - who, I might add, had never before been targeted in all the conflicts in Kashmir," Clinton told the gathering which was attended by many members of the Sikh community.Clinton had expressed his outrage over the killings.He said that if the difficulties over Kashmir could be resolved, people in South Asia would explode as there is literally no limit to the potential of the life that could be had there."But they are sort of kept back from the modern world by this ancient tension - or at least the tension that grew out of the founding of the nations of India and Pakistan. I say that to make this point only - I'm basically, you know, a very optimistic person. And I have always been and I remain so today," he said.
