NEW DELHI, 24 December 2003 — Talks between India and Pakistan are possible only if cross-border terrorism ends, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told parliamentarians from his Bharatiya Janata Party yesterday.
For talks to be meaningful, the terrorist training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir must be destroyed, he said.
In Islamabad, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said he regretted the premier’s remark.
“It is very regrettable (at a time) when Pakistan was showing flexibility (on resolving the dispute over Kashmir) and hoping for reciprocity,” spokesman Masood Khan said.
“What we need is statesmanship,” he added.
Khan said Indian security forces continued human rights violations in Indian-administered Kashmir and he hoped the Indian leadership would “help improve the environment for talks” between the two countries.
“There has to be an end to repression, to the sufferings of the Kashmiri people,” he said.
The Indian prime minister is scheduled to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit beginning in Islamabad on Jan. 4. He said issues like improving trade and economic relations in the seven-nation grouping were on top of his agenda.
While SAARC is not a forum for bilateral discussions, there is speculation in both India and Pakistan that their leaders will meet on the sidelines of the summit.
Both countries took several steps this year to revive the peace process and have restored diplomatic and road links, and agreed to restart civil aviation and rail links in January.
Kashmir Unrest
In the Indian-administered Kashmir, six people were killed in separatist violence and a hard-line activist was booked under a tough security law.
Residents alleged that security forces killed in custody civilian Ghulam Mohammed Hajjam of Braripathri village in the central Budgam district. Villagers staged a protest, saying Hajjam had been arrested Sunday and his body carried marks of torture. Police and the state government have both ordered investigations into the death, an official said.
In southern Kashmir, three rebels and a federal policeman were killed in two gunbattles and a civilian injured in rebel firing last week died in hospital.
Separately, suspected rebels hurled a grenade at a security patrol in Bandipora, 60 km (35 miles) north of the summer capital Srinagar, injuring one soldier and six bystanders.
In Srinagar, police charged Firdous Ahmed Shah, chairman of the hard-line separatist Democratic Political Movement, under the Public Security Act which authorizes detention of up to two years.
No specific reasons were given for the action against Shah, who was arrested Sunday.
He is the second hard-liner to be booked under the Public Security Act since September when Kashmir’s main separatist alliance split between hard-liners and moderates.
