8 April 2005	Friday	28 Safar 1426

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PEACE BRIDGE (India-Pakistan border), April 7: Showered with tears and rose petals from relatives thought long lost, two groups of Indian and Pakistani Kashmiris walked over the ‘Peace Bridge’ on Thursday, breaking through a military line that has divided them and their land for almost 60 years. Nineteen Kashmiris from the occupied Kashmir side, mostly elderly and wearing green commemorative caps, defied death threats and crossed the metal bridge — painted neutral white for the occasion –- hours after 31 passengers from Azad Kashmir walked into the occupied territory, raising hopes of a lasting peace between Pakistan and India.

“I can’t control my emotion. I am setting foot in my motherland,” said a tearful Shahid Bahar, a lawyer from Muzaffarabad.

“I am coming here for the first time to meet my blood relations,” said Mr Bahar, whose father crossed over in 1949. “It was my dream. It is unbelievable. Everyone is here.”—Agencies

Raja Asghar adds from Chakothi: Tens of thousands people cheered the bus as it drove 63km from Muzaffarabad to Chakothi with 31 passengers accompanied by a huge cavalcade of cars and other vehicles after Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat opened the service on his end.

Hours later, a bus carrying 19 passengers from the held Kashmir arrived after being flagged off by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Srinagar, a day after a bloody attack by militants on a complex housing the passengers.

Some members of a UN military observer group deputed along LoC, were present at Chakothi to watch the historic event.

Chief Minister of held Kashmir Mufti Mohammad Saeed received the Azad Kashmir passengers as they walked over to the other side of the LoC through a newly-built Bailey bridge linking the two sides and his daughter and state ruling party chief Mahbooba Mufti accompanied the passengers from Srinagar up to the AJK side of bridge.

The atmosphere at Chakothi was charged with fears that some shadowy militant groups opposed to the service might attack the bus on the 122-km route from Srinagar to Chakothi. But passengers said would not immediately say if there was an attack on the way by the militants, who had threatened to kill those taking the bus.

“Such people cannot be freedom fighters,” Sardar Sikandar Hayat said about the Srinagar attacks in a speech in Muzaffarabad while inaugurating the bus service, in which he blamed what he called lax Indian security for the incident.

The AJK premier called the LoC an artificial barrier dividing the people of Jammu and Kashmir and said such barriers were destined to meet the fate of the Berlin Wall.

He called for allowing contacts between Kashmiri leaders on the two sides and their involvement in the India- Pakistan dialogue for a solution of the 57-year-old Kashmir dispute.

For the time being, the fortnightly LoC crossings mainly by members of divided Kashmiri families will take place at Chakothi in what is seen as the most concrete outcome of the newly-revived peace dialogue between Islamabad and New Delhi.

But both sides have promised to consider opening some more routes for travel between the two parts of Kashmir as well as between India and Pakistan as confidence-building measures.

Under the scheme, Kashmiris travelling across the LoC are not required to carry Pakistani or Indian passports or visas.Instead they will carry special permits issued to those who can prove their status as what is known as “state subject” under local state laws. This relaxation was given on the insistence of Pakistan, which had argued that accepting the condition of passport and visas for travel across the LoC could be seen as accepting it as the border.

There has been no official explanation why Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would not go to Muzaffarabad for the bus inauguration — to match his Indian counterpart — and left the job to be done by Azad Kashmir premier. But the move seems aimed at not making the Azad Kashmir premier appear as somewhat equal in status to the Indian prime minister but to emphasise Pakistan’s position that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed state whose future must be decided by a UN-mandated plebiscite, compared to India’s stand that the state is its integral part.

Islamabad’s move could also be aimed at showing some difference to the opposition of the bus service by such strong Kashmiri allies as Syed Ali Shah Gillani, chairman of his hardline faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.

Most mainstream political parties in the two countries and on both sides of Kashmir have welcomed the bus service, which will run for the time being only once in a fortnight to carry passengers travelling between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar.

MISNOMER: But what has been generally — and even officially — called “Muzaffarabad-Srinagar (or Srinagar-Muzaffarabad) bus service” turned out to be misnomer because different buses will carry passengers from the two cities only up to Chakothi rather than directly to their destinations.

At Chakothi, passengers from each side will disembark from their buses, walk over the bridge over Khaliana nullah to the other side and take the other bus that will have brought Kashmiris from the other side.

Supporters of the bus service see it as a much needed humanitarian move to help reunions of Kashmiri families divided by three full-scale wars and smaller intermittent conflicts during more than 57 years of dispute over the state following the partition of the sub-continent at Independence in 1947.

It is also seen as a move to help contacts between Kashmiris on the two sides of the LoC to promote an intra-Kashmir dialogue about the state’s future as well as to promote trade and commerce between them.

But the opponents of the bus service fear the move could lead to an acceptance of the LoC as a permanent border dividing Kashmir.

The bus service will allow the first ever organised travel across what was originally called Ceasefire Line drawn by the United Nations in 1949 after the first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, but later renamed Line of Control in the Shimla peace accord signed by India and Pakistan following their December 1971 war.

Both sides had been allowing rare crossings of the line by Kashmiri individuals carrying local travel permits until mid-50s. But such travel permits remained operative for later on although several Kashmiri political parties on the Pakistani side often launched unsuccessful campaigns for opening ceasefire line.

On both sides, passengers were hugged and kissed by relatives they had not held for decades, or in some cases, ever.

“It’s for the first time that I have seen my uncle,” sobbed Noreen Arif, an adviser to Azad Kashmir’s prime minister, bursting into tears and hugging him as he stepped off the bridge.

Attacks by militants who threatened to turn the buses into rolling coffins scared off some passengers but failed to derail one of the most significant and emotive steps in the unsteady peace process. “The caravan of peace has started,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said as he sent off the bus in front of a crowd of thousands braving freezing drizzle at the Lion of Kashmir stadium in Srinagar. “Nothing can stop it.”

Militants tried, firing two rifle grenades at one of the Muzaffarabad-bound buses soon after it left. But no one was hurt, the bus was not hit and did not stop. On both sides of the heavily militarised and policed border, in an area once shelled almost daily, large crowds of locals gathered on the sides of the steep rocky Pir Panjal mountains to watch the event, turned into a major celebration by India.

A large billboard faces Pakistan at the bridge, reading: “No religion teaches animosity towards each other.”

Security in occupied Kashmir was the tightest for years – an armoured car and a busload of soldiers tailed the buses. Militant threats had created a deep sense of unease but also defiance among Kashmiris determined to see families reunited.

The buses stopped at Salamabad in occupied Kashmir for lunch. Schoolchildren waved flags, bands played and cooks prepared a traditional ‘wazwan’ feast of 35 dishes, almost all mutton.

Seventy-five-year-old Mohammed Taj from occupied Kashmir wants to see his sister before he dies.

“For that, I am ready to die. Death is in the hands of God. Insha Allah, we will meet,” he said.

The United States called it ‘a powerful symbol of rapprochement’ between rivals who have fought two wars over the disputed territory.

“The leaders of India and Pakistan ... will continue to have the strong support of the United States as they resolve their differences peacefully through dialogue,” US ambassador David C. Mulford said in a statement.