India tells Pakistan to curb militants, warns attacks could hurt peace drive

NEW DELHI, Tuesday (AFP) India called on Pakistan to live up to its pledge to dismantle militant camps in Pakistan-held Kashmir following a spate of attacks, warning that guerrilla violence could badly hurt the peace drive by the two rivals.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said a deadly guerrilla raid such as the one launched on India's parliament in December 2001 that brought the nuclear-armed neighbours close to war could "greatly upset the (peace) process".

"We believe not enough has been done to dismantle the structures of terrorism," Singh told reporters in the Indian capital.

There has been an upsurge of violence in Indian-held Kashmir since the launch in April of a trans-Kashmir bus service across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border dividing the territory, aimed at reuniting families separated for decades.

Singh said he expected Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to live up to the promise he gave former Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee to stop areas under Islamabad's control from being used for attacks on Indian targets.

His warning came just six weeks after he and Musharraf described the nearly 17-month-old peace process as "irreversible" at the end of talks in New Delhi.

Singh said he had made it clear to Pakistan that reining in "terrorist elements" was a precondition to carrying forward the peace process. "I sincerely hope the government of Pakistan will do all it can to control these (militant) elements," he said.

At the same time, Singh said he was "committed to a meaningful solution" to end the nearly six decades of hostility over Kashmir, which is held in part by each country but claimed in full by both.

He reiterated he had "no mandate to negotiate redrawing boundaries". But he alluded to a possible solution in which greater autonomy and soft borders could be key to resolving the conflict, echoing suggestions by Musharraf earlier this month.

"We can give greater autonomy" to Indian Kashmir," he said, noting "the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is unique in our polity. It has a constitution of its own." He also said New Delhi could work toward a situation where "people on both sides of Line of Control have the feeling it does not matter whether they are living in Srinagar or Muzzaffarabad"..

Earlier this month, Musharraf proposed granting maximum "self governance" to Kashmiris and a move toward more open borders.

But Singh said it was too early to talk of a deadline for settling "a dispute that has defied solution for 57 years".

"I do not minimize the problems and it is much too premature to talk about timetables," he said. "But I entertain hope.... Who would have thought that the Berlin wall would melt or the Cold War would end?"