NEW DELHI, October 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - In an unexpected turnaround, India unveiled on Wednesday, October 22, plans for holding first-ever formal talks with Kashmiri fighters.

India's powerful security cabinet decided that Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani should hold the formal talks with the leader of Kashmir's main separatist alliance.

According to the decision, taken during the two-hour meeting chaired by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Advani will meet Maulana Abbas Ansari, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Home Secretary N. Gopalaswami told reporters in New Delhi that the meeting came in response to Hurriyat's earlier statements expressing interest in holding talks with the government.

But he said the date and venue of the meeting were still to be fixed.

Observers highlight that the Indian government's decision comes as the Hurriyat, an amalgam of 27 separatist parties, is itself in crisis with bitter divisions among its leaders.

Six weeks ago, the alliance unofficially split, with the pro-Pakistan separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani forming a parallel group. Geelani said Ansari, who was elected in July 2003, had no authority to lead the Hurriyat.

The government has previously refused to talk directly to Hurriyat leaders. Instead New Delhi has appointed a series of pointmen on Kashmir in the past few years, but they have done little to solve the dispute over Kashmir, where tens of thousands of people have died in clashes.

The announcement was welcomed by former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat, who said a formal response would be devised by Hurriyat in a day or two.

The Hurriyat wants a resolution of the Kashmir dispute through three-way talks involving India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri fighters.

Separately, Foreign Indian Minister Yashwant Sinha said talks with the Hurriyat were part of India's "internal process" and had nothing to do with relations with Pakistan.

But the decision for talks with separatists came shortly as Sinha announced that India is to retake the initiative to normalize relations with nuclear rival Pakistan, offering a raft of measures ranging from full sporting ties to increased transport links.

At crowded news conference in New Delhi, Sinha unveiled the proposals which include a ferry service from India's commercial capital Bombay to the Pakistani port city of Karachi and a direct bus service between the Indian and Pakistani zones of divided Kashmir.

"These offers are not from a position of weakness," Sinha said.

India could further increase its diplomatic presence in Islamabad if Pakistan accepted the offers, he said, adding that New Delhi also proposed a second round of talks on air links fractured by months of war tensions last year.

But India sent a mixed message to separatists as police in Indian Kashmir detained six senior fighters to prevent them from leading anti-government protests on the 10th anniversary of a massacre of 40 Kashmiris.

The move came before the cabinet's announcement for launching the talks with Hurriyat.

Yasin Malik, chairman of the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and three more of the group's leaders were picked up as they left their office in Srinagar, the summer capital, police said.

Separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who was planning to visit the town of Bijbehara where the massacre took place, was meanwhile put under house arrest in Srinagar, police sources said.

More than 40 people were killed in Bijbehara 10 years ago when security forces opened fire on a group protesting a siege of Kashmir's revered Hazratbal mosque in Srinagar.

As the town, 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Srinagar, remembered the deaths, tensions were high amid protests against the killing of a civilian by security forces during a cordon and search operation.

Police said the man died in an exchange of fire.

Malik, whose group wants complete independence for Kashmir from both India and Pakistan, has been drawing large crowds during the campaign.

An anti-Indian separation effort, which New Delhi claims is backed by Islamabad, has claimed more than 38,000 lives in Kashmir since 1989, according to Indian figures. Separatists put the toll at between 80,000 and 100,000.

Pakistan insists it only provides moral and diplomatic support to separatists it regards as freedom fighters engaged in a struggle for self-determination.