|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Friday, 16 April 2004 |
 |
|
 |
World | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
Indian PM flies to disputed Kashmir amid fresh surge of violence JAMMU, India, Thursday (AFP) Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee flew into Kashmir to address a poll rally, hours after 25 people were injured in a grenade attack by Islamic guerrillas and soldiers killed three rebels. Vajpayee reached Indian Kashmir's winter capital of Jammu to urge the constituency's Hindu-majority population to vote for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party in the national elections which will be held in five stages beginning April 20. Some 7,000 supporters waited for the 79-year-old prime minister in a zone cordoned off to thwart possible attacks by Islamic rebels who have been waging an armed anti-Indian rebellion in the disputed territory since 1989. Earlier in the day, militants carried out a grenade attack on an election rally being held by India's main opposition Congress party in Banihal town, some 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Jammu, in which 25 people were injured. The Banihal attack came just hours after Indian troops shot dead a senior rebel commander of the pro-Pakistan rebel group Lashkar-e-Taiba in a firefight on the outskirts of the summer capital Srinagar. Indian army brigadier A.K. Choudhary named the commander as Pakistani national Abu Kasha and said he had been behind a string of recent attacks on election rallies in Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both. In another incident Wednesday, Indian troops shot dead two suspected guerrillas in the frontier district of Surankot, some 230 kilometres (143 miles) northwest of Jammu, police said. Meanwhile India's deputy prime minister said some headway had been made in his talks with moderate separatists from Kashmir in finding "a process" towards solving the dispute over the Himalayan region. "No one in the government talks about a solution to Kashmir but about the process of finding a solution to the vexed issue," Lal Krishna Advani told reporters in the eastern town of Talcher in Orissa state, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. "Some successes have been achieved in this regard," he said, without elaborating, during a stop on his west-to-east trip across India to seek votes for his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for parliamentary polls in April/May. Advani, who has so far held two rounds of talks with the moderate faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Indian Kashmir's main separatist group, said he was hopeful of resuming the dialogue soon after a new government took office in New Delhi after the ballot. "During the last round of talks we decided that the dialogue would continue after the new government assumes office," Advani said. "They (the Hurriyat) have avoided using the term boycott, although their attempts to dissuade people from voting amounts to it. "I am also under the impression that the dialogue process will continue," Advani said. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
