India, Pakistan back peace process in “tense” talks By Palash Kumar
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The leaders of India and Pakistan vowed to pursue a sluggish peace process but analysts said their meeting in New York appeared to have made little, if any, progress.The nuclear-armed neighbors issued a joint statement after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf held a meeting late on Wednesday night on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session.
“The two leaders … reiterated their pledge not to let terrorism impede the peace process,” said the statement read out by Musharraf to reporters in Singh’s presence.“They expressed their commitment to ensure a peaceful settlement of all pending issues including Jammu and Kashmir to the satisfaction of both sides.”“They agreed that possible options for a peaceful, negotiated settlement in this regard should continue to be pursued in a sincere spirit and purposeful manner,” the statement said.
Television reports in India and Pakistan said Musharraf invited Singh to visit Pakistan and the invitation was accepted.Analysts said the meeting had not carried the peace process forward because it did not lead to expected announcements of India cutting troops in Kashmir and Pakistan pledging more curbs on militants operating in the region.
“TENSE AND STRAINED”
The two leaders did not take questions and India’s NDTV news channel said sources described the nearly four-hour meeting, which included dinner, as “tense and strained.”“It’s obvious that there are bottlenecks which have not been cleared,” South Asia analyst S.D. Muni told Reuters.“We were expecting a detailed joint statement. I understand that a draft was prepared. The fact that it has not been issued indicates that serious differences persist.”
Ties between the old rivals have improved since they launched a peace process in January 2004, but they have still to make substantive progress on the core dispute over Kashmir.Both claim the region in full, but it remains divided by a militarized cease-fire line following India and Pakistan’s first war over the territory soon after independence from Britain in 1947.The two countries have gone to war three times, twice over Kashmir. They were on the brink of a fourth war in 2002 but agreed to a cease-fire in Kashmir in late 2003. That cease-fire has held.
Tens of thousands of people have died in Indian Kashmir since 1989, when a revolt against New Delhi’s rule began in earnest.India wants Pakistan to do more to stop militants slipping across the cease-fire line into India’s portion of Kashmir and launching attacks there.Pakistan, an Islamic nation, says it only provides moral support to what it calls an independence movement in Indian Kashmir, part of Hindu-majority India’s only Muslim state..Before his meeting with Singh, Musharraf told the U.N. General Assembly talks with India should be “result-oriented.”
“Our nations must not remain trapped by hate and history, in a cycle of confrontation and conflict,” he said. “It is essential to find a just solution to the dispute of Jammu and Kashmir acceptable to Pakistan, India and above all, to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”
India controls nearly half of Kashmir, Pakistan a third and China the remainder. India says it has no intention of changing its borders and maintains about half a million troops in its part of Kashmir.