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Kashmiri Activists Disappointed As India Denies Summit Failure
MUZAFFARABAD, Kashmir, July 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh sought to put a positive gloss on the failing Indo-Pakistan summit Monday, disappointed Islamic independence activists vowed to press on with their war against Indian rule in Kashmir, news agencies reported.
Activist leaders based in the Pakistani zone of the divided Himalayan state said India's "obduracy" proved that a struggle was the only solution to the 50-year-old Kashmir problem, the French news agency AFP reported.
"Indian obduracy has destroyed the hopes of establishing peace in South Asia," said Syed Salahuddin, leader of the Hizbul Mujahideen.
"The summit meeting has proved our stance that only armed struggle can bring a solution to the Kashmir issue and we will carry it on until we achieve our goal."
He went on to say the talks between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee failed Monday because the Indians had no intention of making the summit succeed.
"India talked about peace to hoodwink the international community. In fact, it was not sincere," Salahuddin said.
Meanwhile, Pakistanis met the failure of the Indo-Pakistan summit with a sense of deja vu and anger on Tuesday. After more than 50 years, relations with India remain sour, AFP reported.
Major newspapers reported on the demise of the talks with an unmistakable sense of disappointment and, at times, blamed India's refusal to give an inch on key issues.
The papers said that the one positive aspect to emerge from the talks was Vajpayee's acceptance of an invitation to visit Pakistan this year.
Islamic parties said the summit's failure only proved that the Indians were not serious about solving the festering Kashmir dispute.
"We all knew the Indian side will remain uncompromising but this rigidity has further exposed the real Indian face," said Sajid Naqvi, leader of Shiite Muslim party Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan.
"There were hopes the summit would pave the way for a reduction of tension and usher an era of peace and prosperity in South Asia but the opportunity has been lost due to the Indian attitude.
"The international peace and human rights organizations will now be able to understand better who wants peace and who is the enemy of peace in this region."
Another resistance group, the Harkatul Mujahideen, blamed India for the collapse of the summit and applauded Musharraf's efforts to raise the plight of Kashmir to the top of the bilateral agenda, news agencies reported.
"Now the world community should not have any doubt that India does not want to resolve the issue through peaceful means," said Hakatul Mujahideen spokesman, Amiruddin Mughal.
He also said India was to blame for "state-sponsored terrorism" against civilians in the Muslim-majority state.
But on Tuesday, India denied that its leadership summit with Pakistan was a failure and said peace efforts remained on track, despite the lack of agreement on the course of future dialogues.
"I don't characterize (the summit) as a failure. I term it as yet another step in the march towards finding lasting peace," Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told reporters.
"To suggest everything is collapsed. No. That is not true," Singh said.
But, the Indian foreign minister would not say how close they were to an agreement, merely saying, "Complex negotiations and discussions hang by a thread," the BBC online service reported.
Refusing to go into specific details, Singh said the basic areas of difference revolved around Pakistan's insistence on having Kashmir recognized as the core issue governing bilateral relations - in addition to the question of so-called "cross-border terrorism".
Some of the Muslim resistance groups fighting against Indian rule are based on the relatively peaceful Pakistani side of the unofficial border, leading to Indian allegations that Islamabad supports "cross-border terrorism".
Islamabad denies the allegations, but offers open moral and diplomatic support to the Muslim "freedom fighters".
The two sides are believed to have failed to agree on the wording of a final document that would reflect their divergent positions on Kashmir.
The last hours of the summit, held in the Indian city of Agra, saw frantic efforts from both sides to reach some form of agreement. There were even reports of a draft joint statement being drawn up, BBC reported.
The Pakistani side blamed their hosts for the breakdown, insisting that hardliners in India's Hindu nationalist-led government spiked an initial draft agreed on between the two leaders.
The failing summit was the first between the nuclear-capable South Asian powers for more than two years and had carried hopes of formalizing a blueprint to lead them out of more than 50 years of mutual hostility.
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