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India to Offer No Proposals on Kashmir at Summit
SRINAGAR, India, July 12 (News Agencies) - India firmly rejected Thursday Pakistan's demand that Kashmir should be the "core issue" at this weekend's bilateral peace summit, and said it had no specific proposals to offer on the dispute.
"It is not the core issue," Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told a news conference, during which he insisted that Indian sovereignty over Kashmir was enshrined in the constitution and therefore non-negotiable.
"How can I negotiate the constitution?" he said, while stressing that New Delhi was not pushing Kashmir off the summit agenda altogether.
"As on previous occasions ... India is not shy of talking to Pakistan about Jammu and Kashmir," Singh said.
"But we don't have any set proposal on Jammu and Kashmir as such," Singh said.
For the past two weeks Islamabad and New Delhi have waged a war of words over the agenda for Sunday's summit between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the Taj Mahal town of Agra.
Pakistan insists that the Kashmir dispute must be resolved before any other issues can be addressed, while India counters that Kashmir should be part of a "composite dialogue" involving other key areas of bilateral concern such as nuclear confidence-building measures.
"So far as India is concerned, we are very clear that it is a composite dialogue of which Jammu and Kashmir is one part," Singh said.
The cause of two wars between India and Pakistan, Kashmir is divided between the countries and claimed by both.
The conflict in Indian-administered Kashmir has claimed more than 35,000 lives since 1989.
Despite the pre-summit shadow boxing over the agenda, the foreign minister insisted that he was optimistic about the first meeting between the leaders of both countries for more than two years.
"The priorities of one or the other will not stand in the way," Singh said.
"I believe the atmosphere, the climate between the two countries should improve. If we are able to proceed down along the path of peace learning to live together as good neighbors, it will be a good achievement."
However, he also warned Pakistan that India would never give up its battle against "cross-border terrorism" in Kashmir.
"It is of course our expectation that Pakistan ... will address itself to cross-border terrorism. But if Pakistan declines to, that is no reason for India to give up."
Singh said India might be willing to discuss Pakistan's offer of a "no-war" pact, but stressed that it would have to include what New Delhi alleges is the "proxy war" being waged by Islamabad through groups in Kashmir.
"A no-war pact that did not include proxy wars, cross-border terrorism and clandestine wars would really not be addressing the situation properly."
On other issues that could be brought up at Agra, Singh said India was "very desirous" of developing confidence-building measures on the use of conventional as well as nuclear weapons.
India and Pakistan conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998, fuelling international concern over South Asia as a potential nuclear flashpoint.
The foreign minister said India would also raise allegations that Pakistan continues to hold Indian prisoners from their 1971 war. Pakistan denies the charge.
Official Indo-Pakistan contacts have been frozen since a border conflict along the disputed Kashmir border that broke out in May, 1999, just months after Vajpayee's summit with then Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif.
Meanwhile in Kashmir, two activists and an Indian army soldier were killed in a fierce encounter overnight Wednesday near Banihal township, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the Kashmiri summer capital of Srinagar.
A civilian caught in the crossfire also died, while a soldier and another civilian sustained injuries, a police spokesman said.
The encounter blocked traffic for two hours on the Jammu-Srinagar highway, stranding more than 2,000 Hindus making the annual pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave.
Four members of an army patrol were killed late Tuesday evening in a blast near the disputed Kashmiri border with Pakistan in Musko Valley, around 200 kilometers (120 miles) northwest of Srinagar.
Nine other members of the patrol were seriously injured.
An army spokesman said it was not immediately clear if an activist-laid landmine caused the blast or an unexploded shell left over from a 1999 border conflict between India and Pakistan in the area.
Also, two Kashmiri activists and three Indian security personnel were killed in a clash at Hanji Koot village in the northern Kashmiri district of Baramulla on Thursday.
In Mughilian village, near Rajouri township, two activists and two Indian armed forces personnel were killed overnight during a gun battle.
Two women, who strayed into the crossfire, were also killed.
Three activists were killed in another fierce encounter in the southern Kashmiri district of Doda, while a civilian and an activist died in Poonch and Kupwara districts.
Meanwhile, a grenade launched at a security camp in Srinagar's Miasuma locality on Wednesday evening missed its mark and exploded among a group of civilians, injuring three.
The injured were taken to hospital, where a woman died early Thursday.
Another activist grenade attack in Bandipora, 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of Srinagar, injured five Indian border guards.
Violence has surged in Kashmir ahead of the weekend summit between Vajpayee and Musharraf.
Hardline activist groups are opposed to the summit, which they fear could result in a backdoor agreement to resolve the Kashmir issue without their involvement.
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