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SRINAGAR, India, Nov 29 (AFP) - Non-Kashmiris fighting Indian troops in the disputed territory are not freedom fighters but terrorists, former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto said in an interview published Thursday.

"Let me clear here that non-Kashmiris are not freedom fighters and indigenous Kashmiris are fighting for their freedom," Bhutto told the Greater Kashmir, a daily in the Indian-administered territory.

"I also call non-Kashmiri militants as terrorists," she told the newspaper in an interview from New Delhi, where she is on a private visit.

Bhutto had been asked about India's stand that Pakistan supports "cross-border terrorism" in the form of Islamic militants crossing the disputed border to target Indian forces.

Pakistan considers the insurgency in Kashmir part of an indigenous drive for self-determination.

Bhutto claimed her position may eventually be adopted by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, noting that she was ahead of Musharraf in breaking ranks with Afghanistan's fundamentalist Taliban.

"What I say first is followed by Musharraf later," Bhutto said.

Bhutto, who in 1988 became Pakistan's first woman prime minister, said she opposed hardline Kashmiri groups such as Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba "which are trying to hijack the Kashmir movement."

"We believe the people of Kashmir should be given right of self-determination. They should choose their own future," she said.

Bhutto called for nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to resolve through dialogue all issues, including Kashmir, to avoid a repeat of conflicts such as the two-month confrontation in 1999 in Kashmir's Kargil district in which 1,000 people died.

"We certainly want to avoid conflicts like Kargil. We do not want it (the hostilities) to turn into nuclear war," she said.

More than 35,000 people have died in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir since a Muslim insurgency started in 1989.

Separatists in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, criticised Bhutto's comments.

Leading female separatist leader Aasiya Andrabi said that Bhutto, "who knows nothing about Islam, has no right to pass comments against the mujahedin."

"Kashmiris will never tolerate people dubbing great warriors as terrorists," she added.

Andrabi praised foreign militants groups for their struggle in Kashmir.

"Be it Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, it is because of the sacrifices of their cadres that Kashmir issue is on everyone's lips," said Andrabi, who heads the Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of Faith) political group.

The Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen militant group said Bhutto was siding with India by speaking "Indian language".

Spokesman Jameel Ahmed said: "Both Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri militants are bricks of the same wall and no one can succeed in separating us or creating differences within."

Meanwhile Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes Thursday reiterated New Delhi's position that Kashmir was an integral part of Indian territory, while ruling out a referendum on the future of the state.

"India is not divided on the Kashmir issue as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf recently said in a media report," said Fernandes.

"Kashmir is a core issue. Musharraf was probably trying to impress on his home constituency that India is divided on this issue which is not the case," he added.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both. The two countries have fought two wars over the region. 

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