Violence overshadows Indian PM's Kashmir peace talks

INDIA: India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Kashmiri separatists will try to revive a faltering peace process in talks overshadowed by this week's massacre of Hindus and resurgent violence in the disputed region.

Singh's meeting with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella alliance of two dozen political separatist groups, is the second since he took power in 2004.

But Hurriyat comes to New Delhi this time with more than a little scepticism: they say the government has been dragging its feet on promises made in the first round last September.

"Our basic thrust will be that the government of India should be serious about resolving the issue of Kashmir," Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said on the eve of Wednesday's talks. The Himalayan region of Kashmir is at the heart of nearly 60 years of enmity between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and the cause of two of their three wars.

Thirty-five Hindus were killed this week by militants in India's Jammu and Kashmir, the mainly Hindu country's only Muslim-majority state. And, hours before Singh's talks, two militants and a policeman were killed in a night-long gunbattle.

Some Indian officials say the violence could be a response to a high voter turnout in by-elections last week in the state, and also aimed at souring the mood ahead of Wednesday's talks.

"These were attempts to disrupt (the talks) but we are not going to be cowed down by this," National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said on Tuesday, referring to the Hindu killings.

Despite the background of violence, Wednesday's talks are expected to set the stage for a round-table conference with separatist groups in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir's main city, on May 25. Farooq, who heads the six-member Hurriyat team, said the group would offer Singh suggestions for a political solution to the Kashmir problem rather than make demands.

Singh assured Hurriyat in September that he would cut troop levels in the region - with an estimated 500,000 soldiers and policemen, it is one of the most militarised in the world - if insurgent violence and guerrilla incursions from Pakistan ceased. New Delhi, Wednesday, Reuters.