India opens talks on Kashmir with Muslim militants

India took the first steps towards peace in Kashmir yesterday when senior government officials began talks with the most important militant Muslim group. The talks got under way after more than 100 people were killed in a series of massacres on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

India took the first steps towards peace in Kashmir yesterday when senior government officials began talks with the most important militant Muslim group. The talks got under way after more than 100 people were killed in a series of massacres on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

The meeting with commanders of the Hizbul Mujahideen, which 11 days ago offered a three-month ceasefire, reflected India's determination to grasp the nettle despite the horrors committed by other separatist groups.

But even before the start of yesterday's negotiations in Srinagar, leaders of the Hizbul Mujahideen in Pakistan gave India five days to include Islamabad in the meetings. If this did not happen, they warned, the organisation would review its truce.

The mixed messages came as the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, led a delegation that included the opposition leader, Sonia Gandhi, to Srinagar, where they met families of the victims of the six massacres. Indian politicians have been calling for a crackdown against the groups behind the attacks, which are being seen in India as an attempt to undermine the hopes for peace raised by Hizbul's ceasefire plan.

The start of the talks underlined Mr Vajpayee's assertion that his government would not be cowed by the militants' opposition to Hizbul's stand.

The senior bureaucrat in India's interior ministry, Kamal Pande, led a government team that included officials, police and army commanders, and intelligence officers.

They met Hizbul's nominated representative, Faizal Haq Qureshi, who is part of the Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference umbrella group of Kashmiri political parties, with four of the militant organisation's military commanders.

After 70 minutes both groups emerged to announce that they would form two teams that would in future talk about the way to formalise the ceasefire. No mention of the ultimatum of "tripartite" talks was made.

However, the core issue of the future of Kashmir - one- third of which is controlled by Islamabad, which also claims the rest of the territory - could be decided only by Hizbul's leaders based over the border in Rawalpindi.

While the discussions amounted to little more than talks about talks, they still represented a significant step forward, as this is the first time the Indian government has sat down with the rebels' military commanders, particularly in such a politically charged atmosphere.

The ultimatum issued from Pakistan by the Hizbul leader, Syed Salahuddin, reflected the level of pressure on the organisation, both from within and without. Last week he was suspended from the United Jehad Council, a militant umbrella group, because of the ceasefire, which opponents have described as a "betrayal".

Among the conditions he set out for the start of substantive talks on the future of Kashmir, Mr Salahuddin said that negotiations must be "tripartite" - in effect including India, Pakistan and Kashmiri groups, - and that they must be unconditional.

Failure to agree to Hizbul's demands by 5pm next Tuesday, he said, would prompt commanders to reconsider their ceasefire, and he warned that "India would have to bear the consequences of that".

A Hizbul spokesman, Salim Hashmi, stressed that the discussions taking place in Srinagar were aimed at finding a way to keep the ceasefire alive. "They are discussing the modalities of the ceasefire offer," he said. "That's a different issue. Our statement is in the context of actual talks [on Kashmir's future]." Mr Hashmi said that India had given no response to Hizbul's demand for tripartite talks.

The likelihood of such talks appears slim, though, because on Wednesday Mr Vajpayee blamed Islamabad for having a hand in the massacres, while Pakistan's military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, accused renegade Indian soldiers of seeking to stir up feuding militant groups.