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New Delhi Warned By Military On Kashmir Glacier Deal With Pakistan
Srinagar (AFP) Nov 3, 2006 India's million-plus military Friday cautioned the government against extending concessions to Pakistan on a strategic glacier in disputed Kashmir. "I am sure that security concerns will be kept in mind when any such decisions are arrived at by the government," Indian army chief General J.J. Singh told reporters in the Kashmir summer capital Srinagar. The warning came in the run-up to the resumption of bilateral talks, which were put on ice after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for a spate of bombings on trains in July that killed 186 people and left 800 others injured in Mumbai. "The government has been conveyed our views and we hope that the dialogue which is going to take place between the foreign secretaries (of India and Pakistan) will tell us what lies in the future," he said. India and Pakistan opened talks in February 2004 on eight nagging issues including Siachen, where the two fought a bloody battle in 1987, three years after India occupied strategic peaks. Military experts estimate that a 7,000-strong Indian military and 4,000 Pakistani troops are stationed on the 6,300 metre (20,700 feet) icy wasteland in divided Kashmir, where the bitter cold and high altitude claim more lives than actual combat. South Asian neighbours India and Pakistan, who carried out tit-for-tat nuclear weapons tests in May 1998, have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their 1947 independence from the British.
earlier related report "The level of violence has been brought down as compared to (the) previous year," army chief J.J. Singh told reporters Friday in Srinagar. The city is the summer capital of Indian Kashmir where a deadly separatist Islamic revolt has raged against New Delhi's rule since 1989 killing thousands of soldiers, suspected militants and civillians. "Combat-related casualties (of the army) have also come down substantially," Singh said. The army chief gave no figures but the Indian government reported a drop of 29 percent in insurgency-related killings during the first year in power of Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Azad took over as chief minister of the disputed region on November 2, 2005. "There has been a decline of over 19 percent in overall acts of violence and a 29 percent drop in the killings between November 2005 and October 2006," a statement from the government said. The army chief attributed the decline to the army's counter-insurgency measures in which troops strike first, based on gathered intelligence, rather than responding to deadly attacks by militants fighting New Delhi's rule. "Our counter-terrorism strategy has resulted in bringing down the levels of violence," Singh said. "Our policy is clear -- an iron fist for terrorists and a velvet glove for the people," the army chief said. He said lessening violence meant the state administration was better able to deliver goods and services to Kashmiri civillians. And Singh said the army was committed to stamping out human rights abuses by it own troops. International rights groups and separatists accuse the army of routinely abusing human rights in Kashmir. "We want to win hearts and minds of the people and we can only win that when we don't have any deliberate acts of human rights violations," Singh said. "We do not tolerate any deliberate acts of human rights violations. All acts which are reported are investigated." The reported lessening of violence comes against the backdrop of a slow-moving peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan which have fought three wars since independence from Britain, two over Kashmir. Each nation holds the region in part and claims in full. Since the launch of the insurgency 17 years ago, 110 members of the army have been punished after being found guilty of rights abuses. The insurgency has claimed more than 44,000 lives by official count and more than double that number according to the separatists' tally.
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India Accuses Pakistan Of Seeking To Infiltrate Its Military
New Delhi (AFP) Oct 23, 2006New Delhi accused Pakistan of encouraging Indian soldiers to betray their country on Monday and said it had launched a massive operation to weed out those who had become spies. |
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