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India begins peace conference on Kashmir

Posted on: Saturday, 25 February 2006, 04:00 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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