Pakistan’s top diplomat met Kashmiri separatist leaders in India on Wednesday, a day before he was due to hold the first official talks with his Indian counterpart since the 2008 Mumbai attack.
The meeting came on the same day Indian border guards said their troops came under fire from Pakistan in the Samba area of southern Kashmir, although Pakistan denied any shooting by its troops.
Salman Bashir’s meeting with the Kashmiri leaders was likely to reinforce Islamabad’s demand that today’s talks with India include all outstanding issues between the two countries.
PHOTO: REUTERS
India wants the talks to have a narrow focus on Pakistan’s actions on terrorism. New Delhi broke off talks after the Mumbai attacks, saying Pakistan had to first crackdown on militants.
“This [meeting] gives Pakistan an additional moral and political argument that the talks between the two countries have to be comprehensive, composite and need to focus on Kashmir,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, dean of social sciences at Kashmir University.
Bashir met three Kashmiri leaders in New Delhi, including the chief of the main Kashmiri separatist alliance, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and hardline leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
‘TRIPARTITE DIALOGUE’
“I stressed on a tripartite dialogue over Kashmir,” Geelani said, referring to a demand that Kashmiris be included in any negotiation between India and Pakistan over the disputed region, which has sparked two of the three wars the two countries have fought since 1947.
Bashir’s meeting is unlikely to go down well with New Delhi, which accuses Pakistan of aiding a 20-year-long separatist insurgency in Kashmir that killed tens of thousands of people. It is a charge Islamabad denies.
Progress in the talks between Bashir and his Indian counterpart, Nirupama Rao, could have ripple effects on the battle against militants in Pakistan and efforts to get Islamabad to go after the Taliban, by reducing its logic of keeping massive forces on the eastern border with India.
BORDER FIRE
Earlier on Wednesday, Indian border guards said they came under fire from Pakistan.
“The firing from across the border started early morning. A BSF [Border Security Force] personnel was injured,” said Vinod Sharma, a spokesman for the border guards.
Pakistan denied any shooting by its troops.
“Our troops were not involved in any firing. There may be some problem on their own side,” said Nadeem Raza, a spokesman for Pakistan’s paramilitary Rangers.
The Indian army also said that three soldiers, including one officer, were killed in the gunbattle which began on Tuesday in Sopore town, south of Srinagar, and ended the next day.
Six soldiers were injured in the fighting, along with a civilian who was caught in the crossfire, army spokesman Colonel J.S. Brar said.
Police said more militants might have died and that they were searching for bodies in the rubble of buildings destroyed in the battle.
The clash started after Indian troops surrounded two houses where heavily armed militants had been holed up.
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