MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan-controlled Kashmir (Agence France-Presse) — One of the most senior guerrilla leaders fighting Indian rule in Kashmir said this week he was prepared to discuss Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s new proposals for resolving the conflict.
However, Syed Salahuddin, chief of the multiparty United Jihad Council, also said Wednesday he was unhappy that Gen. Musharraf was giving concessions to India without anything in return.
“I regret that Pakistan is step-by-step backtracking on its stand on Kashmir,” Mr. Salahuddin said in a statement.
“It has always supported settlement of the issue in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiris as well as the relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions.
“But all of a sudden, division of Kashmir has been proposed which has nothing to do with Islamabad’s principled stand.”
However, Mr. Salahuddin said the proposals outlined by Gen. Musharraf could be discussed in tripartite talks among India, Pakistan and the representative Kashmiri leadership.
Gen. Musharraf proposed on Monday a three-stage formula for finally ending the rival claims of Pakistan and India, the first of which is to determine the ethnic and geographic makeup of Kashmir’s regions.
Demilitarizing all or some of these regions would follow, with the final stage involving changing the “status” of each of the regions.
“Change in status could be independent status, condominium, which includes joint control [by Pakistan and India]; it can be U.N. mandate also,” Gen. Musharraf said, withdrawing Pakistan’s long-held demand of a plebiscite for the people of Kashmir to decide their own fate.
Majority-Muslim Kashmir has been divided between Muslim Pakistan and mainly Hindu India since the two nations gained independence from Britain in 1947.
Their rival claims over the Himalayan state were the cause of two of their three wars.
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