Archives

NEW DELHI, May 11 (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Saturday the authorities would take all necessary steps to prevent the sabotage of elections due later this year in strife-torn Jammu and Kashmir state.

Polls in the disputed Himalayan region are expected to be held in September or October.

Vajpayee's statement came as 16 people, including 11 Muslim militants, were killed in separatist violence in different incidents in the state over the past two days.

Police said two soldiers and two militants were killed in a gunbattle near the border with Pakistan on Saturday. Nine separatists and three civilians were killed in clashes elsewhere in the state on Friday.

Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting India's rule in the country's only Muslim majority-state, where authorities say about 30,000 people have been killed in more than 12 years of conflict.

India accuses Pakistan of stoking the rebellion by arming militants and sending them across the border. Islamabad denies the charge, saying it only provides political and moral support to what it calls the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.

"We are determined to cut through this vicious circle of violence and ensure that the forthcoming elections to the Jammu and Kashmir assembly are...free and fair," Vajpayee said at a defence awards function.

He said there had been "crude threats" to those who wished to participate in the democratic life of the state.

"Their sponsors and the rest of the world should be warned that we shall do everything necessary to prevent violence or coercive measures from sabotaging the conduct of elections in Jammu and Kashmir," Vajpayee said.

Kashmir's main separatist alliance, All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has said it will boycott the elections.

So far no militant group has threatened to disrupt the polls. Separatists had called for a boycott of elections in the state in 1996.

The region has been at the centre of a military standoff between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since a December attack on India's parliament that India blamed on Pakistan-based guerrillas.

Vajpayee said India had hoped things would improve after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in January promised a crackdown on extremists.

"Unfortunately, the measures which followed that speech turned out to be largely cosmetic and not sustained," he said, adding that militant activities had increased since then.

"As the snow melts in the Himalayan mountains and terrorist elements from the al-Qaeda and Taliban forces seek a new outlet for their activity, infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir has seen a further increase," Vajpayee said.

He said this had had direct consequences for the violence in the state. In March and April this year, around 600 people had been killed, Vajpayee said. "Even in the first 11 days of May, we have had 80 violent incidents with about 110 lives lost." 

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager