British FS Straw ashamed at Jallianwala massacre
Pakistan Times Monitoring Desk

AMRITSAR (India): British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has expressed shame at the 1919 pre-independence massacre of hundreds of Indians by a British General in the northern city of Amritsar, an official said Friday.

Straw, who visited Thursday the Jallianwala Bagh city park, the site of the massacre, wrote in the visitor’s book that he felt ‘ashamed’ at the incident, said park secretary S.K. Mukherjee.

“This was a terrible occasion in which so many Indians were slaughtered for which I feel ashamed and pained with sorrow,” Straw, who is currently on a visit to India, wrote in the book.

At least 379 Indians, who were among the thousands holding a peaceful pro-independence meeting in Jallianwalah Bagh on April 13, 1919, were killed in police gunfire.

The firing was ordered by British General Reginald Dyer who was later removed from his post.

The massacre stirred the nationalist feelings across India that led to the call of ‘full independence’ from British colonial forces.

India, Britain to hold major mily planning exercises

India and Britain will hold a joint military planning exercise next month which will be the largest such operation in more than five decades, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Friday.

Called ‘Emerald Mercury’, the mock exercises in southern Hyderabad city would be accompanied by a “strong programme of military training, exchanges, attachments, visits and joint working groups,” Straw told a seminar here.

The visiting Foreign Secretary said Britain and India were also fighting terrorism through training and intensive policy discussions. He said to help further in this cooperation, a full-time police liaison officer would be deputed at the British High Commission in New Delhi.

Military planning exercises are mock situations on paper, with conflict scenarios discussed and joint strategies developed to deal with them, an Indian army officer said.●