Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Kashmiri separatists will try to revive a faltering peace process yesterday in talks overshadowed by this week’s massacre of Hindus and rising violence in the disputed region.

Singh’s meeting with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella alliance of two dozen political separatist groups, is the second since he took power in 2004.

But Hurriyat comes to New Delhi this time with more than a little scepticism: they say the government has been dragging its feet on promises made in the first round last September.

“Our basic thrust will be that the government of India should “be serious about resolving the issue of Kashmir,” Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said on the eve of the talks.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir is at the heart of nearly 60 years of enmity between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and the cause of two of their three wars.

Both countries claim the region in full but rule it in parts. An Islamist revolt against Indian rule in the region has killed tens of thousands of people since 1989.

But peace moves by New Delhi and Islamabad after going to the brink of war in 2002 have seen overall violence levels fall and the establishment of transport links between the two Kashmirs.

Yesterday, the two countries agreed to launch in June a second bus service connecting Poonch in Indian Kashmir with Rawalkot on the Pakistani side, a joint statement said.

They also agreed to start in July a truck service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, the main cities of the two Kashmirs, to help cross-border trade, it said. The two cities are already linked by a bus service.

The talks took place under the shadow of a spike in militant attacks in recent weeks in Kashmir.

Thirty-five Hindus were killed this week by militants in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, the mainly Hindu country’s only Muslim-majority state.

And, hours before Singh’s talks, three militants and three troops were killed in a fierce, night-long gunbattle in Kangan village, about 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, a defence spokesman said.

Some Indian officials say the violence could aimed at souring the mood ahead of the talks with the Kashmiri separatists.

The talks are expected to set the stage for a round-table conference with separatist groups in Srinagar, on May 25. The first round-table held in New Delhi in February was boycotted by separatist groups including Hurriyat.

Singh assured Hurriyat in September he would cut the number of troops in the region if violence and guerrilla incursions from Pakistan ceased.

He also promised to review cases of people held under anti-terrorism laws and ensure human rights were safeguarded.

But although the government has released some prisoners and reduced the troop level by a few thousand, the separatists have branded these as piecemeal gestures.

<I>From India Source: Reuters</I>