ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI, 30 July — Pakistan and India disagreed bitterly yesterday over the holding of elections in Kashmir as US Secretary of State Colin Powell left the region saying the vote will be an ideal opening for peace between the two. Pakistan insisted that elections scheduled to take place in Indian-administered Kashmir in October will fail to achieve a breakthrough in its standoff with India. "The elections are in no way going to solve the problem," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told reporters in Islamabad.
India was quick to react, rejecting the Pakistan stance on the Kashmiri elections and insisting that a peaceful poll was essential before any negotiations. "The elections will be a litmus test of Pakistan’s intentions," Indian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao told reporters in New Delhi. "We will be monitoring Pakistan’s attitude very carefully. The present conditions are not conducive for dialogue," she said, adding that the elections could set the right conditions for talks.
Powell stressed during his weekend swing through Islamabad and New Delhi that local polls in the disputed Himalayan region should be seized as a chance for dialogue between the nuclear rivals. "Elections ... can be a first step in a broader process that begins to address Kashmiri grievances and leads India and Pakistan back to dialogue," the top US envoy said after talks with the leaders of both countries.
"All parties must do their part to ensure that the upcoming elections can be held in safety and without interference from those who would like to spoil those elections," Powell said before leaving for Thailand on Sunday. Powell pressed India to deploy independent election observers and release Kashmiri political prisoners to lend the polls world credibility, saying such moves could ultimately lead to "peace and reconciliation" with Pakistan.
But Pakistan said it had no faith in the Indian-organized elections. "Elections have been held in Kashmir previously, they were massively rigged, they were boycotted by the Kashmiri people," Aziz said. "These are not the first elections that are being held and we should not look at them with a very great degree of hope or anything."
A leading Pakistan-Kashmir group also rejected the US stand that elections in the Indian-administered Kashmir could lead to peace in the disputed territory. The Hizbul Mujahedeen spokesman Salim Hashmi said in Muzaffarabad they were not impressed by elections in the disputed territory, but wanted the US to pressure India to agree to a plebiscite on the future of the disputed Himalayan region. "We have no doubt that elections can in no way lead to the solution of the Kashmir problem," Hashmi told reporters. "India is holding elections to form a local administration in the occupied territory and that exercise has nothing to do with the settlement of the long standing dispute."
Indian Kashmiri separatists, however, welcomed Powell’s calls for India to free political prisoners and to permit observers for the upcoming vote in the disputed territory, but held firm on their refusal to participate in the polls. Abdul Gani Bhat, the chairman of the main separatist alliance the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, said in Srinagar Powell was "absolutely right" that Kashmir was on the "international agenda."
