CHAKOTHI/SRINAGAR, 20 December 2003 — Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was praised abroad but criticized at home yesterday for his latest peace offer to rival India, after he signaled new flexibility on the flashpoint issue of Kashmir.

Musharraf said Thursday that Pakistan was willing to look beyond a long-standing UN resolution that calls for a referendum in the disputed Himalayan region. The resolution has been the bedrock of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy for half a century, but is strongly opposed by India.

Some Pakistani commentators welcomed Musharraf’s comments and separatist leaders in India’s portion of Kashmir also saw it as a step forward.

But the hard-line Islamic opposition coalition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which controls one of Pakistan’s four provinces and shares power in another, said any move toward dropping the resolution would be a “betrayal of Kashmiris” and “surrender before India.” “Nobody has a right to change Pakistan’s Kashmir policy,” said Liaquat Baluch, a spokesman for the MMA, which has a strong voice in Parliament.

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said it was “constructive to relinquish the demand for a referendum on the status of Kashmir.”

In the heart of Kashmir, in the ancient Indian-controlled city of Srinagar, people urged India to respond positively to Musharraf’s apparent concession.

“India has to reciprocate... only then a solution is possible. Only then our sufferings, miseries and hardships will end,” Mohammad Maqbool said.

Maqbool owns one of the famous houseboats on Srinagar’s Dal Lake, fringed by snow-capped mountains.

“Musharraf has taken a bold step and I wish India reacts accordingly and you will see peace will prevail, tourists will return,” said taxi driver Gulam Rasool.

As soldiers and police in Srinagar stopped vehicles and ordered people out for routine searches and identity checks, Irfan Majid, 35, lifted his woolen pheran, a Kashmiri poncho, to reveal scars across his stomach and chest. “I was interrogated by the army for two days — I am not a militant,” he said. “But let us live in peace now.”

But many Kashmiris on the Pakistani side of the region voiced anger at what they saw as a betrayal by Musharraf of their right, under the referendum, to decide their own fate.

Raheel Ahmad, a 32-year-old grocery shop owner said the sacrifices made by Kashmiris should not “go waste”.

“Only the Kashmiris have sacrificed their lives for the cause,” he said in Chakothi, a picturesque town often shelled by Indian forces before a recent cease-fire agreed by the two sides along the heavily militarized Line of Control dividing them in Kashmir.

“Who is Pervez Musharraf to say that he is ready to abandon UN resolutions on Kashmir’s plebiscite? This is our issue.”

But others were more conciliatory, putting peace ahead of the principle of a UN-mandated referendum. The plebiscite does not give Kashmiris the option of independence, however, which is what many of them aspire to.

“We want peace in the region and want a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue, whatever the required measures are,” said Mohammad Sadiq, another shop owner in Chakothi, 60 km (38 miles) southeast of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

One of about a dozen Muslim separatist groups fighting for Kashmir’s independence or merger with Pakistan said Musharraf had no right to make his offer.

“The president should respect the aspirations of the people of Kashmir... and in future should stress the implementation of self-determination only,” said Jamiatul Mujahedeen, a hard-line pro-Pakistan group.

Syed Salahuddin, head of Hizbul Mujahedeen, the main Pakistan-based guerrilla group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, gave a cool response and asked Pakistan’s government not to give any more concessions to India.

But housewife Amina Bano, 50, said she just wanted peace. “I will pray and I am sure God will give success to Musharraf and the bloodshed, the ruthless killings will end in our Kashmir,” she said. “Peace with dignity — we deserve it now.”