By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Apr 7 2005 (IPS)

As Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flagged off Thursday the first passenger bus service to roll across divided Kashmir in 58 years, there were hopes that the new ‘soft border’ policy could provide a breakthrough in solving the long-festering dispute over the strategic mountain territory between India and Pakistan.

Just how high the stakes are in the success of the symbolic first trip was evident from the fact that Singh was accompanied in Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir, by the country’s top political leadership including ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, Home Minister Shivraj Patel, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and other members of the Union Cabinet.

”The Caravan of Peace has begun and nothing can stop it,” said Singh speaking at the inaugural function at the Sher-e-Kashmir stadium in Srinagar.

Live television images beamed from Srinagar on Thursday morning showed Singh and his colleagues shaking hands with the passengers and embracing some of them before the start of the journey, made risky by Islamist militant groups vowing to turn the bus into a ‘coffin’.

The potential of the bus service for lasting peace was certainly not lost on the militant groups that mounted on Wednesday a desperate ‘fidayeen’ (suicide) attack on passengers housed in a well-guarded tourist complex in Srinagar near where the 170-kilometer journey to Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistan part of Kashmir, began.

Security guards engaged two men armed with automatic weapons and shot them dead but not before they had injured half-a-dozen people and set ablaze the building in which many of the 21 passengers were housed.

Wednesday’s attack only steeled the determination of India’s political leadership to see that the bus service, that would help reunite Kashmiri families divided by the territorial conflict, stays on track.

”These are desperate responses by those who do not want the dialogue (between India and Pakistan) to go ahead,” Singh said immediately after the attack.

In Islamabad, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri expressed similar sentiments when he told reporters that he found the attack on the passengers ”unbelievable” since all that they wanted to do was ”meet their loved ones from whom they were separated.”

”No religion allows violence,” said Kasuri who is closely associated with the tortuous negotiations that finally led to the inauguration of the two-way bus service with passengers allowed to travel with special documents rather than passports and visas.

Among those who condemned the attack was U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan who said in a statement on Wednesday that the introduction of the bus service was a ”tangible achievement of the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan.”

Annan expressed hope that the bus service would lead to ”additional confidence- building arrangements followed by substantive agreements on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir”.

India and Pakistan were partitioned in 1947 on the basis of religion and the dispute over Muslim-majority Kashmir began after its Hindu ruler acceded to India. The issue then blew over and war clouds were soon in the sky.

India and Pakistan fought three wars over Kashmir and a Line of Control (LoC) – a live, fenced border – keeps hundreds of families divided on either side.

While the new bus service would reunite such families the militant groups that claimed responsibility for the attack see the passengers as traitors to the armed struggle for an independent, united Kashmir in which an estimated 50,000 people have died over the past 15 years.

For India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed since 1998, the bus service is one of a series of confidence building measures (CBMs) aimed at building up a climate that could eventually lead to a solution in Kashmir.

Other CBM measures include inviting Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to watch a series of cricket matches currently being played between India and Pakistan in different Indian cities. Musharraf has accepted and is now scheduled to watch a one-day international match on Apr. 17 in the Indian capital where he was born.

Top analysts in India see the bus service as a bold step that that would allow the building up of a political dialogue with Kashmiri leaders in Srinagar. This in turn would pressure Pakistan to find a lasting solution that is acceptable to all parties in the conflict.

”If India could use the bus service between the two capitals of Kashmir as a means to integrate the people living across the LoC emotionally, economically and politically, it would provide the much needed space for both the Kashmiris and Pakistanis,” said Suba Chandran, Assistant Director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) – a think-tank devoted to South Asian security issues.

Chandran, however warned that if India itself perceives the bus service as an end in itself, and does not initiate any further dialogue with Kashmiri leaders or begin negotiations with Pakistan, it could result in frustration all around and scuttle current peace talks between New Delhi and Islamabad.

So far, though, New Delhi has shown far more keenness on the bus service than Islamabad. And Pakistan’s enthusiasm is in question, especially since the reciprocal bus service from Muzaffarabad to Srinagar on Thursday will be flagged off by the premier of Azad (free) Kashmir rather than the top Pakistani leadership.

In keeping with its muted approach Islamabad has also not allowed political leaders from Indian Kashmir to travel to Muzaffarabad on the symbolic first bus trip.

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