[Prev][Next][Index]
Pak President Meets Separatists
(Updates with confrontation between police, protesters.)
NEW DELHI, May 5 (Reuter) - Police used water cannon on Friday to
disperse hundreds of Hindu nationalists protesting against a meeting between
Pakistan's president and Kashmiri separatists on Indian soil.
President Farooq Leghari met leaders of the All Party Hurriyat (Freedom)
Conference in New Delhi on Thursday before returning to Islamabad from a
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit meeting.
They met at the Pakistani High Commission where they spoke for three
hours and prayed together, newspapers said.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) said demonstrating members of the youth
wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) burned effigies of
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in the Indian capital to protest
against the meeting.
Police trained water cannon on the demonstrators to prevent them from
marching to Pakistan's High Commission, PTI said.
A BJP member of parliament later led a small delegation to the embassy
where they submitted a statement denouncing Pakistan's alleged interference
in India's affairs, PTI said.
Leghari was quoted as telling reporters upon arriving in Islamabad that
it would be a ``farce'' for India to hold elections in Kashmir and that the
Hurriyat, which includes more than 30 separatist groups, would not take part
in polls.
Separatist leaders were tight-lipped after the meeting.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence
in 1947 over Kashmir.
Mostly Hindu India, which rules over two-thirds of Kashmir, accuses
Pakistan, an Islamic republic, of arming and training Moslem militants.
Pakistan, which controls the rest of Kashmir, says it provides only political
and diplomatic support.
Jammu and Kashmir, which is India's only Moslem-majority state, is
gearing up to hold state elections for the first time since the separatist
revolt erupted in 1990.
Officials have said the polls could be held next month although dates
have not yet been set.
``I am shocked how the Indian government can permit the Hurriyat leaders
to meet the Pakistani president since Islamabad has all along been aiding and
abetting terrorism in Kashmir,'' opposition leader Sikandar Bakht of BJP told
the upper house of parliament.
``If Pakistan's president is so enamoured with Hurriyat leaders, let him
take them to Pakistan,'' V.K. Malhotra of the BJP said.
Indian security officials returning from a twice-yearly meeting in Lahore
with Pakistani counterparts said on Friday that New Delhi would go ahead with
plans to build a wire fence along the two nations' border in Jammu.
Indian officials dismissed Pakistani claims that the border had never
been demarcated, saying pillars had stood along the line for decades, news
agencies reported.
REUTER
Transmitted: 95-05-05 11:32:03 EDT
