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Powerful Hindu Leader Warns India Not to Cede Kashmir
NEW DELHI, July 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) -A vital ally of India's ruling coalition has warned it will withdraw from the government if New Delhi cedes parts of Muslim-majority Kashmir to Pakistan in an upcoming summit, press reports said this week.
Leader of the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena party, Bal Thackeray, said that "Shiv Sena ministers would resign from the government" if such a decision was taken at the summit due later this month, the Press Trust of India reported.
Shiv Sena is a vital ally of the ruling BJP-led coalition and has in its ranks 15 members of parliament.
"I will stringently oppose any proposal to this effect," Thackeray said in an interview with his party's mouthpiece, Saamna, the reports said.
Thackery said the talks between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would yield little.
"When nothing could be done in the last 53 years (since independence from British rule), what can happen now?" he asked.
However, both Vajpayee and Musharraf have expressed optimism over the summit, to be held from July 14 to 16 in India.
Meanwhile key Kashmiri activist outfit, Hizbul Mujahideen, said it viewed India-Pakistan talks as a positive development, but did not pin much hope on the upcoming summit.
Hizbul spokesman, Salim Hashmi, said his group would consider giving a "positive response" provided the July 14-16 talks between Musharraf and Vajpayee made some headway.
"We do not oppose dialogue. But, given the history of bilateral talks we are not very much hopeful that the upcoming exercise can deliver anything," Hashmi told reporters.
He said it was encouraging that General Musharraf has stressed that Kashmir was the "core issue" and that the dispute would be the focus of his talks with Vajpayee.
Earlier, eleven people, including two children and three women, were injured in a grenade attack by suspected Islamic activists in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said. They said the activists had thrown the grenade at a member of a pro-Indian government activist group, but the bomb missed the target and exploded among civilians.
Police said all the injured were rushed to a hospital in the state's summer capital Srinagar, which is about 35 kilometers (20 miles) from the site of the explosion in the central Kashmir district of Budgam.
Five of the injured, including the two children, were in critical condition, doctors said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
India had invited Musharraf for dialogue with Vajpayee in New Delhi. Musharraf has accepted Vajpayee's formal invitation.
Pakistan has recently called upon the Indian government "to end its repression of the Kashmiri people in order to create a positive environment for the Pakistan-India dialogue at the summit level."
The summit, after a two-year freeze in dialogue, will discuss the 54-year old dispute over Kashmir, which has caused two of three wars between the rival neighbors.
War with India over the disputed northern territory of Kashmir came shortly after independence and the two countries fought again in 1965.
The predominantly Muslim Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan. Some 35,000 people have died since India started a violent crackdown against a 12-year old Muslim separatist movement in the Indian-held zone.
Human rights and separatist groups put the number at double this figure and blame it on India's excessive use of force.
Pakistan, which controls the northern third of the Himalayan state, has called for a referendum so that Kashmiris can choose between India and Pakistan.
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