SRINAGAR, July 31 (1995): Diplomats negotiating the release of five Western hostages in Kashmir said talks with their Moslem militant captors were delicately poised on Monday as separatist groups in India and Pakistan issued fresh appeals for a peaceful end to the four-week-old standoff. "It's all very delicately poised now," said one diplomat in Srinagar, summer capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state. "We can't be seen or heard saying anything which could jeopardise our efforts," a second diplomat told...

SRINAGAR, July 30 (1995): Foreign governments seeking the release of five Western hostages in Kashmir are pressing Pakistan to help free them and have asked India not to raid their captors' hideout, diplomats said on Sunday. They said several high-level representations had been made to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and other senior government officials to help secure a peaceful end to the crisis, nearing its fourth week. "The onus of solving this issue is with the militants, but the Western governments...

NEW DELHI, July 30 (1995): The death toll in six days of disastrous floods caused by heavy monsoon rains in India's Kashmir region reached 72 on Sunday, the United News of India (UNI) said. The deaths have been caused by house collapses and landslides in the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir. Authorities waged a big rescue and relief struggle to help flood victims, carrying truckloads of food grains and medicines and ferrying doctors to affected areas, the news agency said. Floods caused by overflowing rivers...

SRINAGAR, July 29 (1995): Separatist militants and bad weather threaten an annual Hindu pilgrimage of more than 40,000 worshippers in the Moslem-majority north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said on Saturday. Heavy rains over the past week left 18 people dead and hundreds marooned in the state, while roads and bridges have been washed away and landslides have curtailed traffic on the two main highways. The 32-km (20-mile) Himalayan trek to the cave shrine of Lord Shiva begins on August 5 near Pahalgam,...

SRINAGAR, July 29 (1995): Kashmiri leaders have rejected India's plans to hold elections in the strife-torn state saying they were aimed more at impressing the West than findng a solution to the problems of Jammu and Kashmir. India in June extended New Delhi's direct rule over Jammu and Kashmir saying it planned to hold elections in the state to start afresh the democratic process. Rebels have been waging a five-year-old rebellion against New Delhi and militancy in the state is rampant. While some militant groups want...

SRINAGAR, July 28 (1995): The anguished partners of five Western hostages implored Kashmiri militants on Friday to release their loved ones, saying the captive tourists were innocent, ordinary people. "You are causing us much pain and suffering. In the name of God, please let them go immediately," the women said in a front-page advertisement bearing photographs of the victims and their companions and printed in a local newspaper. But the three-week-old hostage crisis showed no signs of abating and diplomats said the...

SRINAGAR, July 27 (1995): The Kashmiri militants of the shadowy Al-Faran group holding five Western hostages communicate by handwritten messages and prowl remote corners of the Himalayan mountains. Little else is known about a group which even people and organisations well-connected to the scores of groups fighting Indian rule of the Himalayan region do not know and cannot trace. "Al-Faran is new. Nobody knows its ideology or thinking. This is the problem," Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, president of the separatist All Party...

JAMMU, July 26 (1995): A bomb exploded on a scooter in the winter capital of the rebellious Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, killing a Hindu holy man and injuring 27 people, three of them seriously, police said. Witnesses said many of the injured were Hindu holy men gathering in Jammu for a pilgrimage to Amarnath cave in the Kashmir mountains. No one claimed responsibility for the explosion. Eight more people, including five policemen, were hurt after the blast when an angry mob clashed with security...

NEW DELHI, July 24 (1995): The Indian government on Monday ruled out releasing jailed Moslem separatists in exchange for the freedom of five Western tourists kidnapped by Moslem guerrillas in Kashmir. "There is no question of releasing any militant (in exchange for the abducted tourists)," Home Secretary K. Padmanabhaiah told reporters here, adding that the government's stand on this was "very clear." Padmanabhiah denied press reports that several of the 21 imprisoned Moslem militants whose release is being demanded...

SRINAGAR, July 23 (1995): Foreign governments seeking the release of five Western hostages in Kashmir are pressing Pakistan to help free them and have asked India not to raid their captors' hideout, diplomats said on Sunday. They said several high-level representations had been made to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and other senior government officials to help secure a peaceful end to the crisis, nearing its fourth week. "The onus of solving this issue is with the militants, but the Western governments...