Indian officials try diplomacy in Kashmir

By John Chalmers

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters): Not so long ago, the idea of Indian officials sitting around a table with Kashmiri separatists would have been unthinkable. Today, the government is working behind the scenes to make it happen.

On the face of it, there is little cause for optimism about a region that U.S. President Bill Clinton described before visiting India in March as perhaps "the most dangerous place in the world".

There has been no let-up in the bloodshed that has plagued Indian-controlled Kashmir since 1989, and there is no immediate prospect of peace talks between India and Pakistan on a dispute which has consigned them to bitter enmity for half a century.

But now there are signs that India is looking beyond the guns of its 250,000 army, paramilitary and police personnel in Jammu and Kashmir state to stamp out the rebellion against its rule.

Shortly after Clinton's visit, India released from jail several leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference -- an alliance of pro-separatist groups with thinly veiled links to Pakistan -- and quietly engaged them on talks about talks.

The development has taken many by surprise.

As a website run by the government of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir says, Hurriyat to the Indian mind is "at best corrupt and self-serving, at worst little better than terrorists".

"What had hitherto been a taboo, not meant to be touched even by the end of a barge-pole by the powers that be of the Indian nation-state, has suddenly been recognized by them as the totem of a people in revolt," the weekly Indian magazine Outlook said.

But Umar Farooq, one of seven executive members of Hurriyat and chief priest in the Moslem-majority state, says that having made its first step the government is now unsure how to proceed.

New Delhi says any talks must be held within the framework of the constitution: Hurriyat says they must be unconditional.

"Everyone agrees that dialogue is the only way out, but the big question is how to begin. There is confusion and chaos in New Delhi on how to start the process," says Farooq, a mild-mannered, educated and articulate man in his 20s.

His more hardline colleague and newly elected chairman of the seven-year-old umbrella group, Abdul Ghani Bhat, believes India's overtures could be a ploy to cut Pakistan out of the equation.

He also suspects that India may be seeking to discredit and divide Hurriyat by forcing it to compromise on key principles -- most notably that any talks must involve Pakistan -- and then sending it away from the negotiating table empty-handed.

Finally, Bhat says New Delhi is merely trying to hoodwink the international community into believing that it is tackling a flashpoint which has become a global concern since India and Pakistan declared themselves nuclear powers in 1998.

India controls about 45 percent of the Himalayan territory comprising the regions of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Pakistan holds just over a third and China controls the rest.

New Delhi and Islamabad have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over Kashmir, and they stood at the brink of another full-scale conflict last year as Indian forces repulsed intruders from strategic peaks on its side of a ceasefire line.

Since that clash, which cost the lives of more than 1,000 soldiers, India has refused to hold peace talks until its neighbor stops pushing militants into Jammu and Kashmir.

Whatever the motives behind New Delhi's move to open channels of communication with Hurriyat, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's coalition government is clearly in no mood yet to concede much on such a nationally emotive issue.

This month the cabinet roundly rejected a vote by Jammu and Kashmir's legislative assembly for a return to the autonomy enjoyed by the state before 1953, when New Delhi's jurisdiction was limited to defense, foreign affairs and communication.

"If they reject autonomy on what point will they talk to Hurriyat?" asks Ali Mohammad Sagar, a minister in the Jammu and Kashmir state government.

"What will the meeting ground be if they have rejected our proposal, which is within the four walls of the constitution?"

The Jammu and Kashmir assembly is led by state Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, a smooth political operator whose National Conference party is a small constituent of Vajpayee's coalition.

Abdullah's father, Sheik Abdullah -- the "Lion of Kashmir" -- was arrested by the federal government on charges of fanning separatism in 1953, when he was "prime minister" of the former princely state.

Noor Ahmad Babu, a politics professor at Kashmir University, says the government may have come under pressure from Hindu nationalist groups allied to Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party which see autonomy as the first step on a road to secession.

There was also considerable alarm that pro-separatist comments being made by leaders of other states could lead to a domino effect and, ultimately, "balkanization" of the country.

Babu also believes that in rejecting autonomy, the government may have wanted to leave something to discuss with Hurriyat.

Indeed, Abdullah's critics say he suddenly dredged up the autonomy question -- four years after making it his platform in state elections -- because he was worried that Hurriyat could steal his political space in Kashmir.

Abdullah denies the accusation -- and charges that he was trying to distract attention from what many see as misgovernance of a state where corruption, nepotism and unemployment run rife.

The center-state face-off over autonomy and the prospect of engagement with Hurriyat has triggered a cacophony of debate on the Kashmir dispute and thrown up a raft of ideas on how to resolve it.

Some commentators have mooted a trifurcation of the state along roughly communal lines into Kashmir, Ladakh and Jammu, while others believe the Kashmir Valley should be spun off as a separate state.

The U.S.-based Kashmir Study Group, for instance, proposed various options which would all mean sovereignty for Kashmir, with or without India and Pakistan.

Outlook described the Indian government's reaction to the group's suggestions as "guarded while being generally positive".

What the government plans to do next and how soon no one quite knows. But as one columnist commented, the Kashmiri horse has bolted and it's too late to shut the stable door.