ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI, June 21: Firing has dropped sharply on the front line between India and Pakistan in the last week but villagers who had fled the area are still reluctant to go home, officials on both sides said on Friday.
Hundreds of people have been killed and wounded and thousands forced to leave their homes this year because of heavy exchanges of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops on the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir and elsewhere along their border.
But the front line has fallen relatively silent amid strong signs of an easing of tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
India says ‘infiltration’ has largely stopped but says it is not yet ready to pull troops back from the front line.
Officials in Pakistan and India said there had been no major firing on the Line of Control in Kashmir in the last five or six days and tension was falling.
“For the last five or six days there had been no incident of firing in this sector, but people are not willing to return to their villages on the front line,” Liaquat Hussain, deputy commissioner of Rawalakot district in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, told Reuters.
He said if the situation remained calm and quiet like this for another five or six days, the displaced people would start returning home.
“They want to return but are reluctant as they are not sure how long this pause in the firing is going to last,” a police official in Muzaffarabad said.
INDIAN LEADER: Meanwhile, India’s former home minister Mufti Sayeed on Friday urged Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to invite Kashmiri leaders for talks.
“I urge Prime Minister Vajpayee to invite the leaders of Hurriyat Conference for talks,” said Sayeed, referring to the All Party Hurriyat Conference — a conglomerate of some 23 political and religious groups in occupied Kashmir.
“Even if the infiltration stops, the resentment within (held Kashmir) will continue,” he told a news conference in Srinagar.
“To address that Vajpayee should invite the Hurriyat for talks.”
Sayeed threw his weight behind Hurriyat on the issue.
“Truce is mandatory for talks,” he said, “and hence Hurriyat leaders should be allowed to visit Pakistan to make that clear to the ‘militants’.”
The former minister also urged India and Pakistan to “give up confrontationist attitudes” and resolve the Kashmir dispute through talks.
“War is no solution. Three wars between India and Pakistan have failed to resolve the dispute of Kashmir,” he said.—Reuters / AFP
