NEW DELHI, Feb 16: Jammu and Kashmir's resistance leaders have welcomed Wednesday's decision by India and Pakistan to resume a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad by April , but they demanded more steps, including a restoration of telephone links across the Line of Control.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Kashmir's spiritual leader and chairman of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, described the agreement reached in Islamabad as a "good humanitarian gesture", and said time was ripe to start talks with Kashmiri representatives for a durable solution to the Kashmir problem.

"It's a step in the right direction," the Mirwaiz said. He has been living in New Delhi since last month, ostensibly to study Persian. "The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan have brought happy tidings for Kashmiris. They must now address the political issue."

He said the two governments should revive travel links between Jammu and Sialkot and Mirpur and Poonch to enable actually divided Kashmiri groups to resume their normal family ties.

As it looks, the bus link between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar would serve more as a trade route, which it originally was. Only the other services proposed by the Mirwaiz would genuinely enable divided families to get together. There was very little migration from the Valley to Azad Kashmir after 1947.

Former APHC chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani described Wednesday's move to restore the bus links as cosmetic, even meaningless. But he appeared to have dropped his initial objections to the service whereby he had described it as a move by both sides to quietly accept the LoC as an international border.

India has allowed cell phone service in the Valley and there are a few cyber cafes too in Srinagar. But officially communication links with the other side of the LoC are not permitted.

"Telephone links are badly needed between the two sides. It does not reflect well on the state of relations between the two countries that we are not allowed to hold talks with our families," the Mirwaiz said. Residents, separatists hail start of Kashmir bus service

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Shouts of joy were mixed with expressions of anger in Kashmir after the bus link agreement. The announcement set off celebrations in Uri with people rushing out of homes and shops, hugging and kissing each other, residents said.

"It is a historic decision. I want to be the first in the bus to visit the other part of Kashmir," said Reyaz Ahmed, 24, from Uri, which is 100 kilometers west of Srinagar and will be the main transit point from the Indian side. His uncle lives in Azad Kashmir.

But hard line groups dismissed the breakthrough. "The bus service is being started to finish off the ongoing freedom struggle in Kashmir," the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen's field commander Gen Umar said in a statement. The Mujahideen "will continue armed struggle in occupied Kashmir until we achieve complete freedom from India," the statement said.