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Peace opening in India-Kashmir
22/10/2003 13:52 - (SA)
New Delhi - India made a dramatic U-turn in its Kashmir policy on Wednesday, saying its deputy leader would hold talks with the Kashmiri separatists it has shunned, prosecuted and tried to discredit for 13 years.
The separatists welcomed the announcement and called an emergency meeting to decide their response.
No date was mentioned for the talks between Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani and Maulvi Abbas Ansari, chair of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.
It would be the first high-level contact between secessionist leaders and the government to resolve the 13-year Kashmir insurgency, which has claimed 63 000 lives.
"If everything goes well, Allah willing there will be a road ahead and there will be talks," Ansari told private Zee News television. "Disputes are resolved only through talks."
The government's decision was made at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security and announced by Home Secretary N Gopalaswamy. He said: "The government will meet Ansari in response to his statement of August 25 that they are interested in talks with the central government."
Positive change
"This is a positive change in the Indian outlook over Kashmir," said Omar Farooq, Kashmir's highest Islamic cleric and also a separatist leader. Farooq hinted that the separatists could seek the involvement of Pakistan in the talks - which New Delhi has repeatedly rejected in the past.
A senior intelligence official in Kashmir said that the government's policy turnaround was made because "nothing seemed to be working out. First they tried politicians, but the Hurriyat did not talk; then they tried retired bureaucrats, but the Hurriyat refused."
Hurriyat is a grouping of religious and political parties in Kashmir that has said it would speak only with an official with high enough rank to ensure any agreement is carried out.
For years, the government rejected any talks with Hurriyat, saying it had no way of knowing whether the group truly represented the will of the Kashmiri people. The separatists have boycotted elections and refuse to accept India's sovereignty over the part of Kashmir under New Delhi's control.
In the past few weeks, however, Hurriyat has split and its influence weakened, after deep divisions between pro-Pakistan and pro-independence factions came to a head.
Ansari heads the pro-independence group and has earned credibility in the Kashmir Valley.
The insurgency began in 1989, when about a dozen Islamic militant groups, based in Indian Kashmir and across the frontier in Pakistani territory, began fighting to wrest the province from Indian control.
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir since they became independent from Britain in 1947. Both countries claim all of the Himalayan province, which is divided between them by a 1972 cease-fire line.
AP reporter Mujtaba Ali Ahmad contributed to this story from Srinagar, India.
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