SRINAGAR: Moderate Kashmiri leaders’ supporters in occupied Kashmir were keenly awaiting the return of their leaders on Thursday from a historic trip to Pakistan for talks about the region’s future. The leaders, who have been on a two-week visit to Pakistan, will travel on the Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus service across the de facto border dividing mainly Muslim Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Police said security would be tight for the ride on the bus, launched in April as part of a peace drive by India and Pakistan. It has been opposed by some guerrillas who have vowed to turn the vehicles into “coffins.”
The road will be searched for bombs and booby traps,” a police officer said in Srinagar, where an uprising has raged against Indian rule since 1989.
The Hurriyet politicians’ visit was the first to Pakistan and Azad Kashmir and was seen as another sign of warming ties between India and Pakistan. India had previously refused to let hurriyat leaders travel to Pakistan.
“We’re looking forward eagerly to the arrival,” said Altaf Ahmed, spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front whose leader Yasin Malik was among the delegation. “We want to know what transpired.”
However, unlike their departure when thousands lined the route, a low-key welcome was planned out of respect for 15 people killed on Monday by a powerful car bomb in the southern Kashmiri town of Pulwama.
The blast came a day after the United Jihad Council, an umbrella group based in Azad Kashmir, rejected a call from the visiting leaders for a ceasefire in occupied Kashmir.
Indian officials blamed the guerillas for the blast while militants blamed it on Indian agents seeking to blacken the Kashmiri “freedom struggle.”
There were no breakthroughs on the visit but Kashmiri leaders pressed home their desire for the start of a three-way dialogue involving India, Pakistan and themselves to sort out the region’s future.
Hardline Kashmiri leader refused Pakistan’s invitation to visit, saying Islamabad has offered too many concessions to India over Kashmir without getting anything in return.
India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, launched a peace process in January 2004 but Kashmiris have not been invited to join the table.—AFP
