SRINAGAR, June 30 (2004): Government has nearly completed fencing its frontier in disputed Kashmir in a move to stop incursions by militants from the Pakistani side, the Defence Minister said on Wednesday. The fence covers about 500 km (310 miles) of the 742 km ceasefire line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, army officers said. The rest of the frontier was too inaccessible to fence, they said. "The fencing is almost over. There may be some patches left," Pranab Mukherjee told reporters at the end of a...

NEW DELHI, June 27 (2004): India and Pakistan said on Sunday they had made a positive start in talks aimed at resolving a dispute over the Kashmir region between the two nuclear-armed powers. The two-day talks between Indian Foreign Secretary Shashank, who uses only one name, and his Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Khokhar - diplomats heading the respective foreign ministries - are the first on Kashmir since a failed 2001 summit between leaders of the two countries. Foreign ministry spokesmen of both countries said day...

SRINAGAR, June 26 (2004): Suspected militants shot dead at least 10 villagers in Indian Kashmir on Saturday, police said, a day ahead of talks between India and Pakistan over the disputed Himalayan region. The attack took place near a village in Poonch district, about 250 km (160 miles) north of Jammu, winter capital of Indian Kashmir. The dead included a woman and a child. Twelve people were wounded, police added. Foreign secretaries of the two nuclear-armed countries - bureaucrats who head their respective foreign...

SRINAGAR, June 25 (2004): Suspected Kashmiri militants killed an engineer working for India's state-run railway and his brother by slitting their throats after holding them hostage for two days, police said on Friday. The gruesome murders came two days before top diplomats from India and Pakistan are due to meet in New Delhi for talks on the Kashmir dispute, at the heart of half a century of enmity between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Sudhir Kumar, working with Indian railway firm IRCON, his brother and two other men...

SRINAGAR, June 23 (2004): Her eyes swelled with tears, but Hafeeza Begum's broad smile showed that they were of joy, not sorrow. She was seeing her 80-year-old mother for the first time in 20 years via a video link between the Pakistani and Indian sides of the hotly contested and divided region of Kashmir. "Twenty years is such a long time, it was like a dream, it was like a real meeting," Begum said in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, after the video conference set up by the British Broadcasting...

SRINAGAR, June 15 (2004): A leading Kashmiri militant group moved on Tuesday to reassure Indian tourists they were not targets in the battle against New Delhi's rule after a bloody weekend attack on a popular holiday spot. "We are not against the tourism industry," Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of two rebel groups blamed for a raid on India's parliament in 2001 that almost triggered war with Pakistan, said in a statement to Kashmir's Current News Service. "We want our brethren associated with the industry to better their...

SRINAGAR, June 12 (2004): Four people died and 22 were injured when militants threw a grenade into a hotel packed with tourists in Kashmir on Saturday, police said. Another 20 people were wounded in a separate grenade attack in another part of Kashmir, also blamed on militants fighting Indian rule in the troubled Himalayan region. "Terrorists hurled a grenade at Hotel Purnima. Twenty-six tourists were injured. Out of the injured, four persons including an eight-year-old girl died," a police statement said. The...

SRINAGAR, June 10 (2004): A gunbattle between soldiers and two separatist guerrillas holed up overnight in a mosque in Indian Kashmir ended on Thursday as soldiers shot dead both gunmen, a security official said. Troops on Wednesday laid siege to the mosque after a soldier and militant were killed in a shootout outside the building in Kulgam, south of Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar. Two other rebels took shelter in the mosque. "The encounter has ended and the search operation continues. The body of a militant was...