India and Pakistan vow peace, but no Kashmir breakthrough

India and Pakistan vow peace, but no Kashmir breakthrough

Elizabeth Roche, Agence France-Presse, New Delhi

Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan agreed on Monday on an
array of measures to promote peace in South Asia but remained far
apart on their key dispute -- the future of divided Kashmir.

Indian foreign minister Natwar Singh and his Pakistani
counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said they would prolong a
cease-fire in force along a military line dividing their armies
in Kashmir.

However, the progress they reported was largely on peripheral
issues while on Kashmir -- the spark of two of their three wars
-- they repeated long-held differences.

Still, both men sought to highlight achievements of the
meeting -- the fruit of a peace process launched in January after
the two countries had stepped back from the brink of a fourth war
in 2002.

"Even modest progress is worthy of respect," Singh told a
joint news conference. "India is committed to deepen and widen
this engagement with Pakistan in order to resolve all issues and
to build a durable structure of peace and stability in South
Asia."

Kasuri also struck a positive note, saying "the sky's the
limit" if both sides worked together.

"I do not believe (the problems) are intractable ... given the
political will, they can be resolved and they should be resolved.
That is a major guarantee for a durable peace in South Asia."

But he renewed Pakistan's charges about human rights abuses by
Indian security forces in Kashmir, accusations denied by New
Delhi. And he said he had "emphasized the centrality" of
resolving the dispute over Kashmir which both nations hold in
part but claim in full.

"We are all aware of what has been the cause of the perpetual
tensions between our two countries," Kasuri said.

Singh said the issue of militants slipping across the border
into Indian-administered Kashmir, where a revolt has raged
against Indian rule since 1989, "remains a serious concern" for
New Delhi.

India has accused Pakistan of failing to honor a pledge to
halt the use of its soil for militant attacks, a charge Pakistan
rejects.

The foreign ministers' meeting was due to be followed by talks
between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New
York later this month.

The ministers agreed to speed up opening consulates in India's
commercial capital Bombay and Pakistan's port city of Karachi and
to discuss conventional and nuclear weapons confidence-building
measures.

They also agreed to hold talks in October-November on
reopening a railway between India's Rajasthan state and Sind
province in Pakistan, closed since a 1965 war. But in a sign of
problems bedeviling the peace process, they made no mention of a
long-awaited bus service between the two parts of divided
Kashmir.

The link would help reunite families wrenched apart when the
subcontinent was split at independence from Britain in 1947 into
mainly Muslim Pakistan and majority Hindu India. The two
countries have been at odds over which travel documents the bus
passengers should use.

Kasuri said Kashmir's future would have to be eventually
addressed.

"In the past we've seen areas where we have reached a pretty
good level of relationship and then we've seen things when they
have deteriorated to wars," he said. "So it's pure logic that in
order to ensure durable peace in South Asia this issue will also
be resolved sooner rather than later.

India has said all bilateral issues must be settled to ensure
a lasting peace and talks should not focus only on Kashmir.
Pakistan sees all other issues as secondary to the dispute over
the Himalayan territory.

Analysts said they were not surprised at the meeting's
outcome.

"There were no great expectations from the talks," said Raja
Mohan, professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru
University.

"The reiteration of positions on terrorism by India and human
rights by Pakistan is not a negative thing. If the two sides can
implement the agreements they've reached, it will be tangible
progress" in improving ties.

The countries began low-level talks in January after India's
then-premier Atal Behari Vajpayee said he would make one last
push for peace in 2003.

But the process lost some steam since India's Congress party
was elected in May, ousting Vajpayee's government, and the tone
of exchanges has become more strident.

The Kashmir insurrection against Indian rule has cost over
40,000 lives by official count.