SRINAGAR, 31July — Kashmir’s main separatist alliance yesterday ruled out taking part in elections in the bloodied territory, days after the United States had said the polls could be a first step to easing tensions in the region.
“We will not participate in an election which is for governance... governance does not figure in our agenda,” Abdul Gani Bhat, chairman of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, on a peace mission to India and Pakistan during the weekend, said he welcomed New Delhi’s pledge to hold fair elections in the region racked by a separatist revolt since 1989. Elections can be a “first step in a broader process that begins to address Kashmiri grievances and leads India and Pakistan back to dialogue,” Powell said in Delhi on Sunday.
Kashmir is at the heart of a seven-month-old military standoff between India and Pakistan.
India hopes that a widely contested poll would boost the legitimacy of its rule in the state. The election is due by mid-October.
Hurriyat is seeking implementation of a 1949 UN motion for a plebiscite to decide whether Kashmir should be folded into India or Pakistan.
“Let the United Nations organize elections... for a specific purpose which is obviously a permanent settlement of the dispute of Jammu and Kashmir (and) we will positively, actively participate in the process,” Bhat said.
Islamabad says the state election cannot be a substitute for a plebiscite to determine the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
Several previous elections in Kashmir have been dogged by allegations of rigging. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has promised the coming poll will be free of irregularities.
Kashmir’s front-line rebel group, Hizb-ul-Mujahedeen, has warned that anyone taking part in the elections would be viewed as a traitor.
In a related development, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha called yesterday for the international community to pressure Pakistan to halt cross-border terrorism before talks between the nuclear rivals could resume.
Yashwant was responding to a communiqué issued by the foreign ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) that urged both sides to take steps to defuse tension and resume dialogue.
“India has never said no to a dialogue with Pakistan,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting in Brunei.
“India has always maintained that if cross-border terrorism continues and people are being killed in India, and the international community asks us to have dialogue — these things don’t go together,” Yashwant said.
Meanwhile, two people, including a Hindu, were killed and four wounded yesterday when militants hurled a grenade at them in Kashmir, police said. No militant group has yet claimed responsibility.
Indian and Pakistani troops yesterday shelled each other across their common border in Kashmir, breaking nearly a two-week lull, Indian defense officials said.
One official said Pakistani troops fired over a dozen mortar shells in the border village of Sair Makri, 130 km west of Jammu.
There were no casualties. Indian troops retaliated by firing mortar shells on Pakistani positions. The exchange was continuing, the defense official said.
