India begins peace conference on Kashmir

By Kamil Zaheer

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
launched a peace conference on Saturday with pro-India parties
and minority Hindu groups in restive Kashmir, but the talks are
seen as being undermined by a boycott by separatists.

Singh opened the conference by calling upon those
boycotting the meeting to join talks in the future.

“I am also confident that others who are not here will
eventually join us once they see the obvious merits in sharing
ideas and working together,” he said.

The one-day talks have been clouded by the killing of four
boys between 8 years and 18 years this week in what police said
was a gunbattle between suspected militants and soldiers.

But villagers blamed the military and an official probe has
been ordered. The deaths in Handwara in north Kashmir have
sparked widespread protests in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir
Valley in the region, cause of two of three India-Pakistan
wars.

Most Kashmiri separatists had earlier rejected Singh’s
invitation to the conference, saying he should have released
political detainees and reduced the number of soldiers in the
restive region before talks to build confidence.

The killings have fueled more anger.

“Human rights violations and peace cannot go together,”
senior separatist leader Maulana Abbas Ansari told Reuters.

A strike called by the breakaway faction of Kashmir’s main
political separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat
Conference (APHC), entered its second day and shops and
businesses were shut in Srinagar, Indian Kashmir’s main city.

The APHC is not attending the conference.

“DEEP ANGUISH” OVER KILLINGS

The president of India’s ruling Congress party Sonia Gandhi
expressed “deep anguish” over the deaths of the four boys.

“The Indian army is confronted with daunting challenges as
it fights terrorism. Even so I want to urge all concerned to
ensure that such events do not occur in future,” Gandhi said.

Anger has also been fueled after a woman was killed in an
army operation against militants on Thursday but security
officials said it was an accident and regretted her death.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad of
India’s ruling Congress party, which is a partner in the ruling
alliance in the state along with the PDP, is attending the
conference as well as the president of the National Conference
(NC), the main opposition party in the state.

“When there are incidents like what has happened in
Handwara, it becomes very difficult and people lose faith in
the government,” Omar Abdullah, President of the National
Conference, told reporters.

Members of the minority Hindu pandit community were also
expected to press for a separate enclave for their community
with the state’s current boundaries. Their representatives say
they need protection from Islamic militants operating in the
state. Overnight, in continuing violence in mainly Hindu
India’s only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir,
soldiers killed there militants in the southern Doda district.

More than 45,000 people have died in the separatist revolt
in the region since 1989.

(Additional reporting by Sheikh Mushtaq in SRINAGAR and
Nigam Prusty in NEW DELHI)