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.