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India and Pakistan seek to alleviate tension
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| 25 May 2001 |
By JIR Special Correspondent Rahul Bedhi
In a sudden and unexpected move aimed at reducing tension between the two South Asian nuclear rivals, India has invited Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, for talks. No dates have been set but official sources in Delhi indicated they would be held sometime after July.
Meanwhile, India has called off its six-month-old unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir that was due to end on 31 May.
Pakistan has reacted positively to India's invitation. Military spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi said Musharraf would vindicate his oft repeated promise of talks with New Delhi at "any time, any place" to resolve the 54-year old Kashmir dispute.
However, Qureshi said all negotiations would be meaningless unless India was sincere in its intentions and did not prevaricate once talks began. He also declared that Kashmir's separatist All Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, a group of 22 Kashmiri religious, political and social organisations, should be included in the negotiations - a condition India strongly opposes.
Fazlur Rehman Khalil, secretary general of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen group, which has been proscribed by the USA, said he did not expect the lifting of the ceasefire to make any difference to the level of confrontation and that violence would continue. "There never was a ceasefire anyway and we had never accepted the Indian announcement," Khalil added.
The decisions to invite Musharraf for talks and call off the Kashmir ceasefire were taken at a meeting of the cabinet committee on security, chaired by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Federal Home Ministry officials in Delhi admit that it was apparent even to senior ministers that last November's unilateral ceasefire initiative had 'failed'. They said over 450 people, including 156 security personnel, had been killed in militant attacks up to the end of April: a casualty rate far higher than that during the six months prior to the ceasefire. Only 183 terrorists had been killed in encounters during the ceasefire, compared with 294 in a similar previous period. The Indian Intelligence Bureau estimates that 500-600 armed militants entered Kashmir during the ceasefire.
The proposed summit will be the first between the two countries since the Kargil war, which, according to India, had been planned by Musharraf (then Pakistan's army chief). India refused to talk with Musharraf's military administration until he stopped 'sponsoring' Kashmir's insurgency. The last meeting between the two countries was between Vajpayee and deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif in February 1999 - nine months after the rivals conducted reciprocal nuclear tests.