ISLAMABAD, 23 December 2003 — Pakistan’s president yesterday reassured Kashmiri separatists that his country will continue to support their struggle for independence from Indian rule, a separatist leader said.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf angered hard-line Islamic leaders and militants last week by saying Pakistan was prepared to set aside its demand to settle its dispute with India over divided Kashmir through UN resolutions that call for a referendum of Kashmiris.
Yesterday, Musharraf held a meeting in Islamabad with leaders from the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an alliance of parties demanding freedom for Kashmir from India.
“Musharraf said the question of Kashmir’s freedom cannot be overlooked,” Farooq Rahmani, a representative of the conference in Pakistan, told The Associated Press. The president also said he supported the “indigenous struggle” for freedom in Indian-controlled Kashmir, Rahmani said.
Resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council in 1948 and 1949 called for the people of both Pakistani- and Indian-held Kashmir to vote on whether a united Kashmir should join predominantly Hindu India or Islamic Pakistan. The vote has never taken place because of Indian objections.
A third option — independence for Kashmir — was not included in the resolutions.
In his comments last week, Musharraf said he still supports the resolutions — the bedrock of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy for half a century — but was prepared to look beyond it if India would also show flexibility.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and supporting militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, and says it will only start dialogue with Pakistan once it stops infiltration of the militants into India. Pakistan denies the allegation, saying it only gives the militants moral and diplomatic support.
Musharraf did not meet with any militant leaders at yesterday’s meeting, which was also attended by the president and prime minister of the Pakistan-administered portion of Kashmir.
Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since gaining independence from British rule in 1947. The dispute is the main cause of their hostile relations.
But in recent months the two countries have moved toward a thaw, including a cease-fire along the military line that divides the Himalayan region between them.
“War is not a solution to the issue. Musharraf wants that Kashmir should come up as an issue (in talks with India) and that it is resolved,” Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told private GEO television.
Violence Continues
Meanwhile, seven people, including two women, were killed in separatist violence in Indian Kashmir and 14 injured in a grenade attack yesterday, police said.
Militants hurled a grenade at a police patrol at Kulgam on the main highway between the summer capital Srinagar and winter capital Jammu, injuring 12 civilian bystanders and two policemen, police said.
Overnight two militants barged into the home of a member of a state-backed militia in Daraj village, in the southern Rajouri district, and tried to kidnap the man, Mohammed Sharief, and his son, a police spokesman said.
Sharief killed one of the rebels but was seriously injured and later died in hospital. The second militant escaped, the spokesman said.
In another case, two women — Sharifa Begum and 18-year-old Kulsuma Bano — and a man, Ghulam Rasool Lone, were shot dead by suspected rebels in the northern Baramulla district.
“The motive behind the killings was not immediately known,” the spokesman said.
But he said the area had seen a number of killings in the past of Kashmiris suspected of working with Indian security forces.
In the neighboring Budgam district, police said rebels shot dead Ghulam Ahmed who was accused of being a police source.
Separately, police said troops shot dead a Pakistani member of the hard-line rebel group Lashkar-e-Taiba in the southern Doda district.
At least 143 people have died in the Kashmir insurgency since India and Pakistan entered a Nov. 26 truce on their disputed border in the province.
Both Indian forces and rebels say the border cease-fire does not apply to their operations.
More than 40,000 people have died in Kashmir since the anti-Indian insurgency erupted in 1989. Separatists put the toll between 80,000 and 100,000.
