Friday, May 6 2005 16:46 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is among the outfits responsible for terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir, has been banned by the United Nations for its links with al-Qaeda.

The organisation, along with its aliases, has been banned under UN resolution 1267 under which all States are obliged to freeze the assets, prevent their entry into or transit through their territories.

The resolution also asks the member countries to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale and transfer of arms and military equipments with the entities belonging to the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organisation.

Lashkar-e-Toiba was put on the list on May two this year (2005) with all its aliases, including al-Mansoorian, a shadow outfit, which has nowadays been active in Jammu and Kashmir.

Pasban-e-Ahle-Hadit, Pasban-e-Ahlehadis, Army of Pure, The Army of Pure and Righteous have also been included in the banned list and all of them are "shadow" outfits of Lashker terrorist outfit.

The move to place Lashker on the list comes days after the United States placed the militant outfit along with its aliases in the list of banned organisation.

The US State Deprtment, in its annual report released recently in Washington, had named al-Mansoorian and all other alias' as Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO)

The US had been pursuing for a UN ban on the Lashker for quite sometime but it got delayed due to lack of unanimity among the member States of the United Nations.

The report said that the elements of Lashker and Jaish-e- Mohammed (JeM) combined with other groups to mount attacks in Jammu and Kashmir under the name of "Save Kashmir Movement."

Almost all Lashker members are Pakistani from Madrassas, across Pakistan and Afghan war veterans, the report said.

The UN has already banned Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and Jaish-e-Mohammed in October 2001.

HuM, whose alias' Al-Faran also figure in the banned list, was responsible for kidnapping of five western tourists from Kashmir valley in 1995.