but are we losing the Kashmir Valley? If incidents like what happened at Anantnag happen again, the little hope there is for peace in the Valley would disappear.

After the killing of 35 Sikhs in Chattisinghpura in March, the security forces killed five innocent villagers. As if the shame of Anantnag was not enough, our sentinels of "law and order" killed seven more people.

If further acts of such indiscriminate use of force continue to happen, the liberal West, which has acquiesced in accepting the LoC as the line dividing the two Kashmirs, would turn against us. In Delhi, Bill Clinton called upon Pakistan to respect the LoC but he also asked us to show restraint and engage in a dialogue with the Kashmiri people. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has also reiterated Clinton's prescription for Kashmir.

The West, Russia, and perhaps even China, accept the division of Kashmir along the LoC because they fear that it can only be changed at the risk of a nuclear conflict. The Americans fear that a conflict between India and Pakistan could escalate to a nuclear level. Thus they accept for now the military status quo but hope that India, through a political dialogue with the Kashmiri people, would arrive at a durable settlement of the Kashmir problem.

However, ... a top strategic expert is of the opinion that nuclear weapons can freeze a conflict and that just as the line dividing Germany did not move by even a millimetre during the Cold War, the line dividing us and Pakistan in Kashmir too would not change once both have nukes. This is absurd, for nuclear weapons did not freeze the German status quo; it was changed peacefully in November 1989 by the German people when they dismantled brick by brick the hideous Berlin Wall. Indeed, no political problem can be frozen forever militarily.

By releasing some Hurriyat leaders, the Centre has begun to tackle the Kashmir problem politically. But for the talks to take off, we must ensure that another Anantnag does not happen. This means that security forces act strictly within limits of law. Since the outbreak of the winter of discontent in Kashmir in 1989, the security forces have committed terrible acts against civilians in the name of combating Pakistan espoused terrorism and the wounds have never really healed.

... The Hurriyat ... comprise pro-Pakistan, pro-azadi, pro-autonomy (within the Indian Union) factions. The negotiations are bound to be exasperating and prolonged and there will be many breakdowns. The negotiators cannot forget the preceding ten years of bloodshed. The most important thing is to talk freely and without a definite agenda.

The demand of some Hurriyat leaders for involving Pakistan in talks is simply a posturing on their part which they will give up as talks with other leaders get going. But the (talks) must aim at handing over power to the representatives of the Kashmiri people. This means a fair election, which the Valley never had, except the fateful one in 1977 which ended Indira Gandhi's make-shift authoritarianism.

Democratic processes help in moderating ethnic- religious conflicts; they even solve. them ... But we have never accepted Kashmiri regionalism as we have accepted Tamil, Andhra, Bengali or Malayali regionalism. We instinctively fear that Kashmir regionalism, if allowed to grow, would ultimately end in separation. We regard the crisis in Kashmir not as a political issue but as a security problem, to be managed militarily and through the agency of the Abdullah family.

It has not worked ... The Hurriyat, however internally divided, represents (Kashmiri) regionalism and we should agree to hand over power to it after a fair election. The pro-Pakistani faction of the Hurriyat may not have the strength to scuttle the democratic process because Pakistan-aided insurgency has failed. The Mujahideen sent across the LoC has not brought azadi but grief to the Kashmiris ...

Autonomy of the kind promised to Sheikh Abdullah in 1953, a promise which was never honoured, is a contentious issue between Srinagar and the Centre. Autonomy is the policy plank of the National Conference. And the Hurriyat would demand much more than the 1953 kind of autonomy. Could we give it to J&K without giving it to other states? ...

It is strange that a party that said in its manifesto of 1998 that India was one culture and one people has forged a coalition government with 25 regional parties at the Centre. The political system of India today ... mirrors the social, cultural and linguistic diversity. (Can it not accommodate Kashmiriyat?) (Source: The Hindustan Times, 31 May, 2000)

The attempt at cloaking acts of terrorism in the guise of jehad carries no conviclion. We and the international community reject the notion thal jehad can be a part of any civilised country's foreign policy. - Atal Behari Vajpayee, Prime Minister.