By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jul 24 2003 (IPS)

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s determination to see through his latest peace initiative with neighbouring Pakistan has been sorely tested this week by a series of suicide attacks in disputed Kashmir.

In an attack on an army camp Monday, eight soldiers and a brigadier were killed and four generals were injured.

India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes, who toured the army camp at Akhnoor on Tuesday, chose only to comment mildly that there was a need to differentiate between militant groups and the Pakistan government.

”It’s being done by people who want to derail the peace process. We will not let it get derailed at any cost. The process will continue,” declared Fernandes, who is known for his outspoken views.

Fernandes’ toned down reaction and refusal to directly blame Pakistan after this week’s violence contrasted sharply with New Delhi’s responses to other similar incidents.

Only last year, the Indian government mobilised 700,000 troops and moved its fighter aircraft to forward bases along the Indo-Pakistan border in response to armed attacks.

Monday’s violence began with an initial attack on the Akhnoor camp by a suicide squad that managed to pick off seven soldiers before being neutralised by overwhelming fire.

But one survivor of the squad managed to hide in the camp. He waited for a team of army brass, led by the commander of India’s northern army, Lt Gen Hari Prasad, to arrive before setting off a bomb that blew himself up and instantly killed Brigadier V K Govil in the process.

Prasad escaped with shrapnel injuries along with a lieutenant general and two major generals.

An army official described the incident as a ”close shave” for the entire uppermost echelon of the northern command.

The attack nearly coincided with one on Hindu pilgrims headed for the nearby hill-shrine of Vaishno Devi, in which six people died and over 40 others were injured.

Both attacks are believed to have been carried out by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God) group, Indian officials say.

While India’s soft approach to this week’s attacks carried the approval of even its worst critics, some have expressed concern at the apparent laxness in security measures by the army.

”Sinister moves to sabotage the peace process and promote an atmosphere that could lead to meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan are welcome. But the government has to explain serious security lapses,” D Raja, secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and a commentator on political affairs, told IPS in an interview.

The CPI, which is aligned with the powerful Congress party against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has repeatedly urged the government to resume full diplomatic ties with Pakistan.

After gap of 18 months, bilateral ties have returned to as normal as they can be, with both the Pakistani and Indian high commissioners back in their posts in each other’s countries.

After a suicide attack on India’s Parliament on Dec. 13, 2001, New Delhi withdrew its high commissioner in Islamabad, suspended rail, road and air links with Pakistan and massed its forces at the border.

This resulted in a military standoff between the South Asian nuclear rivals that was finally defused by top-level international diplomacy.

Both countries then came under intense pressure to resume dialogue.

This dialogue had broken down as result of the undeclared but bloody 1999 war at Kargil on the Line of Control (LoC), a ceasefire line which has separated the Pakistan controlled part of Kashmir from the Indian-held portions for 55 years. The Kargil war started barely two months after Vajpayee symbolically travelled overland to Pakistan on a bus, marking the inaugural run of a new bus route.

He returned home after signing the Lahore Declaration with his counterpart Nawaz Sharif, pledging resolution of all issues through bilateral dialogue.

Peace had another chance in July 2001, when Vajpayee invited Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf – who had seized power from Sharif in a military coup – for a summit in the city of Agra. It failed because no headway could be made on Kashmir.

In April this year, Vajpayee extended his hand of friendship ”for one last time”.

While Pakistan has quickly responded to it, there has been a spate of deadly suicide attacks on civilian and military targets in Kashmir. One of them, on Jun. 28, resulted in the deaths of 12 soldiers and injuries to seven others at the Sunjawan army camp.

Said Fernandes: ”We must not lose heart – such attacks are inevitable in a conflict situation.”

At a press conference in Srinagar on Wednesday, Prasad called the attacks signs of desperation from militant groups. ”We have put them under tremendous pressure and these attacks are attempts to wriggle out of it.”

Many now see hope for a dialogue that could lead to a solution of the vexed Kashmir issue.

Among the proposals often bruited about is the conversion of the LoC into an international border. But this has been opposed by Musharraf, who said in a recent television interview that the LoC was the problem and not the solution.

Still, the tentative warmth between India and Pakistan – including the resumption of bus services between Delhi and Lahore – is already bringing in new political winds.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Pakistan’s Jamait Ulema-e-Islam party who is credited with being the brain behind the Taliban movement, recently came on this bus route, like many ordinary Pakistanis who come to avail of medical services in this country.

Rehman surprised many by declaring that the LoC’s conversion into an international border could be an acceptable solution to the Kashmir problem.

Before leaving for Pakistan Thursday, after a week-long visit that included meetings with Vajpayee and the opposition Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, Rehman vowed to strive for peace between India and Pakistan.

Of the attacks on the army camp at Akhnoor and the one on Hindu pilgrims near the Vaishno Devi shrine, he said: ”Such incidents do not send out a good message to the world community. We should be sending out signals that we want to live in peace with each other.

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