Published January 7, 2004
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Two years after nuclear-armed
India and Pakistan nearly went to war, their leaders agreed
yesterday to hold landmark peace talks next month on all topics,
including the hot-button issue of Kashmir that lies at the heart of
their half-century of mutual hatred and mistrust.
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“I think the victory is for the world,” declared
Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, though observers
cautioned a lasting peace is far from assured.
Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee agreed
to the talks in tightly guarded meetings in the Pakistani capital
under the cover of a major regional summit.
In a joint declaration read separately by the Indian and
Pakistani foreign ministers, Musharraf pledged not to permit his
country to be used as a haven for terrorism, and Vajpayee promised
to seek a solution to the Kashmir dispute.
Gone were the usual Pakistani denials that it had supported
Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan
territory, and gone were Indian demands that cross-border
infiltration stop before a dialogue could begin.
More than 65,000 people have died since 1989 in the conflict
over Kashmir, a picturesque Muslim-majority region divided between
India and Pakistan and claimed in entirety by both. Islamic rebels
have been fighting for independence for the part of Kashmir
controlled by predominantly Hindu India, or for its merger with
mostly Muslim Pakistan.
There have been other attempts to end the feuding between
Pakistan and India, most recently in talks in July 2001 between
Vajpayee and Musharraf in the Indian city of Agra. An attack by
Islamic militants on India’s Parliament in December 2001
scuttled any hopes and brought the two nations to the brink of a
devastating fourth full-scale war — this one with nuclear
weapons in play.
In February 1999, hopes were raised briefly after a meeting
between Vajpayee and then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of
Pakistan.
A Pakistani incursion that summer into India’s portion of
Kashmir doomed those talks, and months later Sharif was overthrown
by Musharraf, the military leader who had ordered the
incursion.
But observers on both sides said the atmosphere is very
different today.
Musharraf has become a staunch U.S. ally since the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks. His government has banned more than a
dozen militant organizations and arrested over 500 al-Qaida
suspects, turning most over to American authorities.
Musharraf has survived three assassination attempts, the latest
two in December.
The last attack, a Christmas Day suicide bombing that killed 16
people, was believed carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Kashmiri
militant group.
Kashmiri rebels denounced the news of talks as a sellout, an
ominous indication of the challenges ahead.
