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| Saturday, 3 January 2004 |
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Top hardline party quits separatist alliance SRINAGAR, India, Friday (AFP) A top hardline party in Indian-administered Kashmir said it will pull out of the main separatist alliance, whose moderate leadership has seen a string of defections. Jamaat Islami, which wants the Indian zone of Muslim-majority Kashmir to join Pakistan, is the first of the seven executive party members in the All Parties Hurriyat Conference to explicitly quit the alliance. Jamaat Islami spokesman Zahid Ali said the party left because it questioned the fairness of the July vote in which Molvi Abbas Ansari, considered a moderate, was elected the Hurriyat chairman. Hardliners in September rebelled against Ansari and set up a rival Hurriyat faction, which has drawn a number of small parties but has failed to secure the defection of any of the seven executive parties. Ali said Jamaat Islami would not join the hardline faction, which is led by pro-Pakistani firebrand Syed Ali Geelani. Geelani himself used to lead Jamaat Islami but was ousted last year amid intra-party disagreements. After the divisions emerged among separatists, the Indian government made a surprise announcement in October that it was ready to hold talks with the moderates. No date has yet been fixed for the breakthrough talks. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both. The Indian side has been entrenched in a separatist uprising since 1989 that has claimed more than 40,000 lives by official count. Separatists and Pakistan put the death toll between 80,000 and 100,000. |
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