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India, Pakistan Could Talk on Kashmir in New York
LUCKNOW, India, Aug 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Sunday said he was likely to meet Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf next month in the United States to resume their talks on Kashmir.
"There is all likelihood that we meet now in New York although no particular time or place has been fixed," Vajpayee told reporters during a daylong visit to this northern Indian city.
He said, besides fresh talks with Musharraf on Kashmir, he would also seek to improve trade relations between India and Pakistan.
"Of course the Jammu and Kashmir issue will be taken up and, besides, I would like to improve economic understandings between the two countries," Vajpayee said in reply to queries on his agenda for the possible talks in the U.S.
The Pakistan government earlier this month had said that such a meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next month appeared highly unlikely.
Musharraf invited Vajpayee for further talks after a historic summit between the two estranged neighbors ended last month in the Taj Mahal town of Agra without the two sides agreeing on a joint declaration.
Vajpayee, in his August 15 Independence Day address, blamed the Pakistani leader for the summit's breakdown and said Musharraf had come to Agra with a one-point agenda that India agree to Pakistan's demands on Kashmir.
The prime minister also said that he had anticipated an upsurge in resistance operations in Indian-held Kashmir following the summit's collapse, and warned Islamabad's alleged backing of the separatists could rebound on Pakistan. India calls occupation resistance operations "terrorism".
"I anticipated that if the summit did not turn out to be a success, there would be an increase in terrorism as is now the case but we have taken very stern measures to curb it in Kashmir.
"From different public platforms, I have been conveying messages that they (Pakistan) are not doing any good by encouraging terrorism. It is also Pakistan's personal problem because if they do not check it now, they will themselves regret it one day," he said.
Relations between India and Pakistan have been strained by their territorial dispute over Kashmir, which is divided between them and claimed by both.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars - two over Kashmir - since the independence of the subcontinent from British colonial rule in 1947.
Pakistan denies Indian charges that it sponsors "cross-border terrorism", but openly offers moral and diplomatic support to what it calls the Kashmiris' legitimate struggle for self-determination.
More than 35,000 people have died in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, since India started a heavy military crackdown on the Islamic movement, which is seeking self-determination in the province, in 1989.
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