Washington, February 22
India and Pakistan “narrowly missed” a historic breakthrough in their three-year-long secret negotiations on the vexed Kashmir issue based on “gradual demilitarisation” of the borders, according to a new publication.

The two countries had “come to semicolons” in their negotiations when the effort lost steam in 2007 due to declining political fortunes of the then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

These details have been documented in an account set for publication today written by ‘New Yorker’ magazine investigative journalist Steve Coll.

The negotiations, which began in 2004, produced the outlines of an accord that would have allowed a gradual demilitarisation of Kashmir, a flash point in relations between the nuclear-armed rivals, the publication said.

“The effort stalled in 2007, and the prospects for a settlement were further undermined by deadly terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November,” Washington Post reported quoting the publication.

Coll, a Pultizer prize winner, says under the plan, the Kashmir conflict would have been resolved through the creation of an autonomous region in which local residents could move freely and conduct trade on both sides of the territorial boundary.

Over the time, the border would become irrelevant, and declining violence would allow a gradual withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops that now face one another across the region's mountain passes, Coll wrote in the publication.

The attempt ultimately failed, not because of substantive differences but because declining political fortunes left Musharraf, without the clout he needed to sell the agreement at home.

Although Musharraf fought for the deal - as did Indian leader Manmohan Singh - he became so weakened politically that he “couldn’t sell himself,” let alone a surprise peace deal with Pakistan’s longtime rival, Coll says, quoting senior Pakistani and Indian officials.

Musharraf resigned as President in August, 2008 after pressure mounted on him to step down from the then newly-elected democratic government in Pakistan.

“The resolution of the Kashmir dispute was the cornerstone of a broad agreement that would have represented a paradigm shift in relations between India and Pakistan- a moving away from decades of hostility to acceptance and peaceful trade,” Coll writes in the publication.

”It was huge - I think it would have changed the basic nature of the problem,” the article quoted a senior Indian official as saying. “You would have then had the freedom to remake Indo-Pakistani relations.”

According to Coll’s account, the secret negotiations consisted of about 24 meetings in hotel rooms in various overseas locations. — PTI

Foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India are likely to hold bilateral talks on the sidelines of the eight-nation South Asian

Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Standing Committee meeting in the Sri Lankan capital next week.

The foreign secretary-level meeting in Colombo is expected to finally bring a thaw to the Pakistan-India relations that have been on a nosedive since the November 26 Mumbai terror attacks, according to diplomatic sources. The SAARC panel, comprising foreign secretaries of member countries, is scheduled to meet in Colombo on February 25-26, which will be followed by a meeting of the council of ministers on February 27-28 to be attended by foreign ministers.

The expected meeting between Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir and his Indian counterpart Shivshankar Menon will be the first high-level diplomatic contact between the two countries after the Mumbai mayhem. It acquires special significance as it could be instrumental in putting the virtually stalled Pakistan-India composite dialogue back on track and could help in resuming the peace process between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours. 

Mingora, Pakistan, February 22
Taliban militants kidnapped the top government administrator and six of his guards in Pakistan’s north-western Swat valley today, the group and officials said, dealing a blow to efforts to restore peace there.

Khushal Khan was on his way to Mingora, the main town of Swat, in his car, when he was abducted by “miscreants”, Syed Mohammad Jawed, Commissioner for the Malakand division, which includes Swat, said.

Pakistani authorities on Monday struck a deal with Islamists to restore Islamic sharia law in an effort to pacify Swat, an alpine valley where the Pakistan military has struggled to put down a Taliban uprising.

A Taliban spokesman in Swat, Muslim Khan, claimed responsibility for the abduction of the administrator.

“He is our guest. We have to discuss some issues with him. We will serve him with tea and then free him,” he told Reuters.

A journalist was abducted and killed on Wednesday as he was accompanying a “peace march” led by a radical cleric who struck a deal with the government for restoration of Islamic law in Malakand. Taliban had denounced killing of the journalist and denied their involvement. — Reuters

At a time when the Unified CPN (Maoist)-led coalition is at loggerheads with the Nepal Army (NA) over the fresh recruitment process in the NA, the Supreme Court on Sunday issued an order to the concern authorities to stop recruitment process until March 1.

Responding to a PIL, filed in the apex court, seeking the latter’s intervention against the ongoing recruitment process in the NA, a single Bench of judge Anupraj Sharma issued a stay order asking the government, the Defence Ministry and the NA Recruitment Directorate to maintain status quo.

The apex court has also asked the defendants to present themselves before the court for further clarifications on February 28.

A group of lawyers moved the SC on February 17, stating that the NA's hiring drive violates the spirit of the Interim Constitution, 2007. They had claimed that the process breached the Comprehensive Peace Accord, 2006, and the Agreement on Management of Arms and Armies, 2006 claiming that NA’s move is directly related to the ongoing peace process.

Advocates Shree Krishna Subedi, Ram Krishna Kafle and Tek Raj Aryal filed the PIL on behalf of an NGO.

Despite repeated directive issued by the Defense Minister and a senior leader of former rebels Ram Bahadur Thapa the NC headquarters had completed the recruitment process last week and decided to start the training course within a month for 2,884 combatants and non-combatant personnel.

Colombo, February 22
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has assured the UN’s humanitarian chief of all efforts to get the conflict-hit Tamil civilians in the north rehabilitated to safe areas, as the latter expressed concern over the plight of thousands of people trapped in war zone.

Rajapaksa told the visiting UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sir John Holmes, yesterday that his government would make all efforts to bring out the civilians trapped in the war in the North Wanni and rehabilitate them.

The meeting followed Holmes’ visit to the camps of Internally Displaced People (IDP) at Vavuniya yesterday. The UN envoy said “tens of deaths and more injuries” of civilians are taking place daily inside the northern Wanni region.

Holmes told reporters that he was concerned over restrictions on freedom of movement of the displaced.

Wrapping up his three-day visit to the island, he asked the government to expedite registration process of refugees at the earliest to ameliorate the lot of the civilians.

Appealing to the government and the LTTE to ensure civilians were spared from the war, he said: “I urge both sides to do everything they can for a peaceful and orderly end to it.” — PTI

Colombo, February 22
The LTTE’s air power has almost collapsed after two rebel aircraft, which entered the Colombo sky to carry out a suicide mission, were destroyed by the security forces, officials said today.

“I do not think the LTTE has any more aircraft left. The two planes took off from a restricted air strip in Pudukudirippu and came to Colombo through Mankulam and Mannar,” the officials said adding they were detected on time failing which the damage to Colombo could have been quite high.

When contacted, military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said the defence authorities had estimated the LTTE to have three aircraft of which one was destroyed a few months ago and the other two on Friday.

The defence authorities had claimed that the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) destroyed the first aircraft on September 9 when the LTTE carried out an air and ground attack on the air force base in Vavuniya.

In the Friday’s attack, two light aircraft of the beleaguered LTTE had bombed Colombo, hitting the main Revenue Department building near Air Force Headquarters and killing at least two persons and injuring 55 others before being shot down.

Nanayakkara said that each plane carried 215 kilograms of C4 explosives. “We suspect that they targeted the Air Force Headquarters, but they had failed in their mission. The aircraft had taken off from Puthukudiyiruppu,” he said, adding it was a suicide mission. Initially it was suspected that the explosion at the Inland Revenue department building was due to a bomb that was dropped by one of the LTTE aircraft.

However, it was later confirmed that the explosion was due to the crashing of an LTTE aircraft on to the building between the third and 12th floors.

The air defence system in Colombo was activated around 9.20 pm on Friday when reports of two aircraft flying over Vavuniya was reported to Colombo.

The power supply to many parts of Colombo was turned off as a precautionary measure as soon as the air defence system was activated. — PTI

Colombo, February 22
At least 21 civilians were killed and over 20 injured when a group of LTTE rebels opened indiscriminate firing at them in eastern Sri Lanka, the Defence Ministry said today.

“According to latest reports received, the death toll at the LTTE village massacre at Kirimetiya has risen to 21 civilians, while over 20 others, including children, had sustained serious injuries on Saturday,” it said. A group of LTTE militants stormed into Kirimetiya village at Rathmalgaha Ella in Iginiyagala yesterday and opened indiscriminate firing at civilian cultivators, it said.

“Kirimetiya village is predominantly a Sinhalese village, located along the Bibila-Ampara main road,” the ministry said, adding the injured civilians were evacuated to the general hospital at Ampara while Army and Special Task Force (STF) personnel were continuing with cordon and search operations to clamp on the perpetrators. — PTI 

Islamabad, February 22
Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik today tied the knot with Britain-born Pakistani girl Mushaal Mullick in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, marking the third cross-border high-profile marriage.

The 40-year-old Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman, who met Mullick two years ago, entered into the wedlock at the 'nikkah' ceremony attended by celebrities and politicians, Geo TV reported.

Mullick, a post-graduate from the London School of Economics and an artist, is the daughter of Rehana Hussain, chief of the Muslim League (women's wing).

This was the third high-profile cross-border wedding after Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who married a US citizen of Kashmiri origin, and Sajjad Ghani Lone, who wed the daughter of JKLF leader Amanullah Khan from J&K. — PTI