SRINAGAR, May 30 (1994): An Indian human-rights group was denied permission to meet three jailed Kashmiri separatists on Monday after its members urged New Delhi to involve Pakistan in peace talks over the Himalayan region. Members of Citizens for Democracy, including a former Indian ambassador to Britain and a retired Supreme Court judge, said in a statement at the end of their five-day tour of Kashmir: "There should be no preconditions by either side for holding the dialogue." India and Pakistan have fought two of...

SRINAGAR, May 23 (1994): Indian army troops captured a top Kashmiri Moslem militant leader Saturday in the state capital of Srinagar, army sources said. Maussam Ali, supreme commander of the Al-Barq organisation, offered no resistance and gave himself up after his hideout in the Rajbagh district was surrounded by troops, the sources said. The Al-Barq, or lightning, is one of several Moslem militant groups campaigning for Kashmir's secession from Hindu-majority India and merger with its Moslem neighbour...

SRINAGAR, May 21 (1994): Seventeen people were killed in the northern Indian state of Kashmir overnight, a day after Pakistani troops allegedly fired rockets at a television tower, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported Saturday. Ten Moslem militants and two security troopers were among those killed since Friday evening in separate gunbattles linked to the secessionist drive in the turbulent Himalayan province, a government spokesman told PTI. Three other people were were killed in two separate incidents when...

SRINAGAR, May 19 (1994): Top Kashmiri militant leader Yasin Malik collapsed in front of celebrating supporters after being freed on bail from an Indian jail on medical grounds, witnesses said on Thursday. Malik, leader of the outlawed separatist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), fainted on Wednesday in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar before he could address a rally greeting his return to the northern Indian state. JKLF officials said the 28-year-old Malik, who emerged from Delhi's Mehrauli prison on Tuesday...

WASHINGTON, May 19 (1994): President Clinton Thursday urged Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to engage in a constructive dialogue with Pakistan over the future of disputed Kashmir. But he made his appeal without rancour and the two leaders, after talks described as friendly and productive, went out of their way to signal closer ties between two countries who have had strained relations in the past. "Today we began what I hope will be a very close working relationship as our two countries forge a stronger...

SRINAGAR, May 18 (1994): A top Moslem militant leader vowed Wednesday to campaign for the independence of Kashmir, after arriving here to a hero's welcome following his release after some four years in Indian jails. But Yasin Malik of the outlawed Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) collapsed after beginning his speech before thousands of cheering supporters in the city's Miasuma district. "I will continue the struggle until Kashmir is liberated from India," the JKLF commander-in-chief said to wild clapping...

WASHINGTON, May 16 (1994): Pakistan has resumed support for militant separatists in Kashmir but the country is not being considered for addition to the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism, the State Department said Monday. "Since spring of last year, official Pakistani material support for Kashmiri militants has dropped, although evidence does suggest that it continues at a reduced level," spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters. "Assistance to the militants by private parties in Pakistan appears to be continuing,"...

NEW DELHI, May 13 (1994): A Pakistani army officer, an Indian soldier and a Kashmiri separatist guerrilla were killed on Thursday in a clash near an army post in Indian-ruled Kashmir, the United News of India (UNI) said on Friday. The four-hour encounter was in the Rajouri sector near the international line of control separating the two old enemies. UNI said Pakistani border troops known as Rangers fired at the Indian post while giving cover to Moslem separatist rebels sneaking into the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir....

NEW DELHI, April 11 (1994): A rare meeting of politicians from the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, due to be held in Vienna this week, has been postponed until May while the participants await visas, conference officials said on Monday. The Kashmiri Leaders Conference will be held on May 9-11, while the participants arrange travel documents, the United News of India (UNI) quoted Bhim Singh, leader of the Jammu-based J&K Panthers Party, as saying. At least 16,000 people have been killed in a four-year-old...

NEW DELHI, May 8 (1994): India is to pump 1.5 billion rupees ($49 million) a year into Kashmir in hopes of weaning people away from a bloody secessionist rebellion, officials said on Sunday. They said the figure could rise to two billion rupees a year ($64.5 million) if necessary. The officials said the money would go into rural development, job creation schemes and health care in Jammu and Kashmir, predominantly Hindu India's only Moslem-majority state. Police and hospitals have reported more than 16,000 deaths...