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| Friday, 18 June 2004 |
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India, Pakistan must improve lives of Kashmiris SRINAGAR, Thursday (Reuters) The peace process between India and Pakistan will fail unless it does more to improve the lives of ordinary people in disputed and divided Kashmir, a leading local politician said on Thursday. Mehbooba Mufti is head of the ruling party in India's state of Jammu and Kashmir, and the public face of the state government's "healing touch policy". Less than two weeks before India and Pakistan get down to their first serious dialogue on Kashmir in years, Mufti said she was concerned the peace process was passing Kashmiris by. And she challenged the two governments to open a road between their regional capitals that has been closed for more than 50 years. The road links Srinagar, summer capital of the Indian part of Kashmir, and Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistani part. "Something has started," Mufti told Reuters in her heavily fortified house in Srinagar. "But unless the people of Jammu and Kashmir are involved, it will not bear fruit. "If the two countries are not able to agree on opening the road, how can they arrive at a decision on a complex issue like Kashmir? If they are not able to agree on this I don't see much hope." Mufti warned that the moderates needed to have something to show from the talks to convince Kashmiris they were not being strung along by the government in New Delhi. On the other hand, progress at both the bilateral talks and the discussions with the Hurriyat Conference could unlock some of the doors to peace, she argued, and even bring hardliners and militants into the peace process. "If people feel there is a serious debate, that both countries are ready to get down to business, if Hurriyat is being accommodated, then people who are sitting on the fence will want to get on board the bus," she said. |
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