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Kashmir moderate assassinated
Compiled from Times wires ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Masked assassins wearing police uniforms gunned down a moderate Kashmiri separatist leader Tuesday, dealing another setback to the effort to defuse the building crisis between India and Pakistan. The attack in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, happened just hours before the Indian prime minister was scheduled to visit the province to inspect Indian troops massed along the front line with Pakistan. Abdul Ghani Lone, a pragmatist who advocated independence for Kashmir but also dialogue with India, was shot dead as he attended a crowded memorial ceremony for an independence leader assassinated 12 years ago. About 5,000 people attended the ceremony. No suspects were under arrest. The killing cast a deeper shadow over hopes that Pakistan and India can be persuaded to pull back from the brink of war, despite mounting international pressure on the two nuclear-armed rivals to cool their confrontation. There were heavy exchanges of mortar and artillery fire across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, and civilians continued to flee their homes amid fears the two sides were preparing for war. India, meanwhile, dispatched an extra 3,000 troops from the strife-torn province of Gujarat to reinforce the front lines, where more than 1-million Pakistani and Indian troops face one another on a state of high alert. On his arrival in Kashmir, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee paid tribute to Lone. "He was working for peace and for this he had to give up his life," he said. "Lone's death means we shall have to work harder for peace to return to Kashmir." Pakistan immediately blamed India for Lone's assassination, calling it "yet another incident in the continuing reign of terror unleashed by the occupying forces in the Indian-held Kashmir for the last 12 years," according to a Foreign Ministry statement. But Lone, 70, had little common cause with the Pakistan government or its claims to sovereignty over the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir. A Muslim and a veteran activist, he had grown disillusioned with Pakistan's management of the Kashmiri separatist movement and had joined the swelling ranks of Kashmiris who want independence. His assassination silences one of the most prominent voices of moderation at a time when moderation is sorely needed, said Alexander Evans, a Kashmir expert at the Center for Defense Studies at London University's Kings College. The slaying, he said, will send a message to other moderates that they are at risk. "It is a very serious blow," Evans said. There are many possible suspects, including Hindu fundamentalists hoping to add to the pressure on both sides to go to war, and internal rivals within the separatist movement. As one of the leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, a coalition advocating the separation of the mainly Muslim province from Hindu-dominated India, Lone had also agreed to join in Indian-supervised elections scheduled for later this year, a controversial move. But analysts said the most likely candidates were the same Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups whose attack last week against an Indian army camp triggered the latest crisis and who are opposed to any form of accommodation with India. Although there have been no claims of responsibility for the latest attacks, blame has fallen on a number of allied extremist groups, including the Jaish-e-Mohammed, also suspected of involvement in the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and a suicide bombing in Karachi this month. Although it is possible that Hindu fundamentalists may have assassinated Lone, it is far more likely that Pakistani militants killed a man whose separatist aspirations were regarded as a threat to their goal of reuniting Kashmir with Pakistan, said Arif Jamal, an expert on Kashmir with the Lahore-based the News. "He wasn't a threat to India. India had no reason to do this," he said. "India tolerated the separatists because India's real enemy is Pakistan. I'm almost sure one of the Pakistani militant groups opposed to any form of dialogue was responsible." In the United States, the Pentagon opened two days of talks with Indian Defense Secretary Yogindra Narain, and the State Department prepared to send an envoy to the region. In an effort to broaden military relations with New Delhi, U.S. officials met with their Indian counterparts under the auspices of the India-U.S. Defense Policy Group. After New Delhi tested nuclear weapons in 1998 that group's efforts were suspended, but they resumed in December. Officials said Secretary of State Colin Powell and others in the Bush administration were focused, first, on trying to end the attacks in Kashmir. Then they would work toward a withdrawal of Indian and Pakistan troops from nose-to-nose confrontation along the border, the officials said. Pakistan's presumed support for the militant groups lies at the heart of the latest escalation, with India threatening to cross the front line to attack militant bases unless Pakistan acts to prevent them from infiltrating the border. But Pakistan insists it is not allowing militants to cross its border and says indigenous Kashmiri groups living in Indian-administered Kashmir are just as likely to be responsible. India and Pakistan were carved from the British Empire in 1947. From the start, they have fought over Jammu and Kashmir, a Himalayan region previously ruled by a maharajah. After the first of their three wars, the state was divided along a cease-fire line, with India retaining about two thirds of the populated land. Jammu and Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state. In the late 1980s, Kashmiris began a violent independence movement. Pakistan supplied this insurrection with weapons and strategy, slowly taking it over. At the same time, India has suppressed the rebellion so harshly that it further alienated much of the Kashmiri population. More than 35,000 people have died in fighting during the past 13 years.
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