11 October 2004	Monday	25 Shaban 1425

NEW DELHI, Oct 10: The newly-revived India-Pakistan peace process received strong moral support on Sunday from politicians, former bureaucrats and journalists at a conference in New Delhi convened by an organisation of South Asian journalists.

While the participants propounded ideas about how the two countries could leave behind a 57-year history of conflict, former Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha said that the Bharatiya Janata Party, which initiated the peace process, would help the Congress party's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to carry it forward.

The discussion on India-Pakistan relations, on the second and final day of the regional conference on "inter-state conflicts in South Asia" organized by the South Asian Free Media Association, was dominated by the festering dispute between the two countries over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Mr Sinha said there would be no partisan approach in India over the process though BJP was now in the opposition. "There will be minor differences," he said but added that his party would support the government in "trying to find ways to establish a durable peace with Pakistan".

He seemed to be trying to allay sceptics' fears that the BJP might try to create hurdles for the Congress-led government to pursue the process to avenge its shock defeat in the last elections.

Mr Sinha said though India was willing to make concessions to its neighbours and "give more than we will get" in trade and economic fields, the same was "not possible in the area of national security".

He and some other participants in the discussion, including former Pakistani foreign secretary Najmuddin Sheikh, called for pursuing a quiet diplomacy in search of solution to avoid possible derailment of the process as a consequence of media publicity of sensitive issues like Kashmir and a costly standoff at the Siachen glacier in northern Kashmir, where more troops have been killed by harsh weather than by weapons.

Mr Sinha also called for India and Pakistan to honour their word, follow sober diplomacy and be on guard against the peace process being derailed by "third parties elsewhere".

A former Congress minister of state for external affairs, Salman Khurshid, referred to several "contemporary models of successful reconciliation" in the context of Kashmir issue but said it would be the "most rewarding exercise" for the two countries to examine the peace agreement between the British government and the Irish Republican Army that ended a prolonged conflict in Northern Ireland.

He said though there were "many layers and dimensions" to the resolution of the Irish conflict, the particular aspect of boundaries becoming progressively irrelevant in the European Union was most interesting for India and Pakistan. "If that happens, the intensity of your conflict disappears."

Mr Najmuddin Sheikh said war was no longer an option after the nuclearization of both India and Pakistan and called for the commonality of their past to be used to assure a better future.

He pointed to the possible "tremendous advantages" of economic cooperation for the two countries and said each of them could top or at least come close to a 10 per cent annual growth if they were free from constraints and expenditure engendered by tensions between them.

A heated discussion took place during a separate session on Kashmir where participants spoke about various options for a solution while some from a group of journalists who visited Indian-ruled part of the state told the gathering that most people there seemed to be in favour of "azadi" (independence).

In the session, chaired by a former governor of the Indian-ruled Kashmir, Mr Jagmohan, grave concern was expressed over complaints of widespread human rights violations by Indian army and paramilitary forces deployed in the state while some participants accused militants fighting the Indian rule of similar abuses.

Mr Jagmohan rejected allegations made by some Kashmiri politicians that he had inspired an exodus of Hindu Pandits from the Kashmir valley and instead blamed it on alleged killings of Pandits by the militants.