India gave a cool response on Tuesday to fresh proposals by Pakistan’s president to end a decades-old dispute over Kashmir, saying it expected such ideas to be discussed in an ongoing dialogue, not in the media.

He repeated Pakistan’s willingness to drop a long-held demand for a referendum on Kashmir’s future. He also called for debate on demilitarising the region and suggested a compromise over its status which could be independence, joint control or some kind of UN control. Salman Khursheed, a general-secretary of India’s governing Congress Party, said there was a need for India and Pakistan to start talking on Kashmir and Musharraf had given some “very positive indications”.

But he said India needed to see progress on ending attacks by militants in Indian Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of stoking a 15-year-old rebellion against New Delhi’s rule in Jammu and Kashmir state, where more than 40,000 people have died in the conflict since 1989. “We would like to see that actually take shape – obviously, over the next six months to see whether terrorism actually goes down”.

The response of Indian foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna was cooler. He said Kashmir was one of many topics being discussed in a peace process with Pakistan relaunched this year. “We do not believe that Jammu and Kashmir is a subject on which discussions can be held through the media” , he told reporters. “So if there are any proposals, suggestions ... that is the forum that we expect they will be brought”.

India’s powerful Hindu nationalist opposition, whose support is crucial to any resolution of the Kashmir dispute, dismissed any solution that did not take into account India’s long-held view that Kashmir was an integral part of its territory.

“Map-making has to stop in South Asia,” said Jaswant Singh, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and foreign minister of the government that relaunched the peace process. “It will not be acceptable in any disguise”.

Kashmiris themselves gave mixed responses. Amanullah Khan, leader of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, thanked Musharraf for accepting complete independence as a possible solution, saying: “It is the first time since the death of (Pakistan’s founder) Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1948 that the head of the state of Pakistan had accepted this basic right of Kashmiris.” But he said it was “painful” that none of the options proposed by Musharraf were based on the wishes of Kashmiris.

Militants attacks

Diplomats and other analysts said it was a positive sign that Musharraf was calling for a debate in Pakistan. But they said he had stopped short of any concrete concession while holding out for a major shift from Delhi that was unlikely any time soon. Indian strategic affairs analyst Jasjit Singh said Musharraf was playing to an outside as well as an internal audience.

While it was a longer-term goal, demilitarisation could not come until there was an end to militant attacks that have continued despite a ceasefire on the dividing line between Pakistani and Indian Kashmir since November, he said. “There cannot be any joint control over any region of Kashmir, at least not in the next 15 years,” Singh said. “Realism says this cannot happen. There is a long way to go for full normalisation of relations. This should happen first.”

Pro-Pakistani militant groups blamed by India for driving the revolt in its part of Kashmir have yet to comment on Musharraf’s proposals. Representatives said they were being studied. Ershad Mahmood, director of Islamabad’s Institute of Policy Studies, said hardline groups would reject any piecemeal solution with different status for different parts of Kashmir. “They want the whole state as one”, he said.

A diplomat in Islamabad said Musharraf’s call for debate could at least give political impetus to future talks between officials of both sides who have so far appeared unable to show much forward thinking on Kashmir.

But any real progress was likely to require top-level talks like those between Musharraf and India’s former prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, last January. The next high-level talks are expected in late November when Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz meets Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh during a stop in New Delhi for a regional meeting.

“If the leaderships on both sides are making the attempt to stimulate real debate, that’s a good sign,” the diplomat said. “But I think their core positions remain a fairly long way apart”.

Y.P. RAJESH

David BRUNNSTROM>/b>