SRINAGAR, 15 September 2003 — Defense Minister George Fernandes yesterday said peace efforts with Pakistan would continue despite a surge in rebel violence in Indian-administered Kashmir.

“Definitely it will continue,” Fernandes told reporters in Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, in response to a query on the impact of the militant violence on the peace efforts.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and funding the rebels.

Relations between the two hostile nuclear rivals have warmed since Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee extended a hand of friendship to Pakistan while visiting Kashmir in April.

But violence in Kashmir has continued with around 170 people dying since Indian security forces killed a senior rebel commander Ghazi Baba on Aug. 30.

On Saturday alone, 23 people were killed, including four Indian Army soldiers and the first rebel turned counterinsurgent leader, Mohammed Yusuf, also known as Kuka Parrey.

Fernandes said Indian troops had delivered a “response” to the increase in rebel violence.

“If there is a militant upsurge (in violence), there is also a military response to it and that response has been given,” Fernandes told reporters in Mattan, 60 kilometers (38 miles) south of the summer capital Srinagar.

Fernandes was here to attend a function in one of the temples of Kashmir, a scenic Himalayan region that is in the throes of a 14-year anti-Indian insurgency that has left in all 38,000 people dead by the official count.

Indian troops on Friday and Saturday shot dead 22 militants, with police reporting four more overnight deaths of militants along the Line of Control (LOC) — the de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. “The minister was obviously referring to that response,” an army officer at the function told AFP.

In Srinagar, Fernandes said the infiltration of militants and munition from across the Pakistan border into Indian Kashmir was continuing.

Earlier in his speech to several hundred people in Mattan, Fernandes said there had been a visible change in the atmosphere in Kashmir since new Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed assumed power in the state late last year.

“Earlier, people used to be afraid of visiting Kashmir, but now people have started revisiting the region to see its beauty,” he said. This year more than 150,000 Hindus pilgrims and an equal number of tourists visited the restive region during the summer season.

Sayeed, in his address at the meeting, asked separatist militants to shun violence and give peace a chance.

“We want to tell the enemies of peace that enough blood has been spilled in Kashmir. Now stop it, and allow us to change the situation,” Sayeed said.

He has promised to calm the insurgency by providing a “healing touch” to the situation with reforms to the security forces and an end to human rights abuses.

He also advocates talks with all the groups, including rebels and separatists.

Sayeed said the people of Kashmir want “peace with dignity.”

“They don’t want the peace of a graveyard and they should not be asked to raise a white flag,” he said without elaborating.

“There can be no solution to the Kashmir issue unless you talk to the people of the state,” he said, praising Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for his initiative in nominating a former bureaucrat, N.N. Vohra, to negotiate the Kashmir issue on behalf of the Indian government.

Separatists have declined to talk to Vohra saying they want high-level talks with Vajpayee himself.