SRINAGAR, Aug 30 (2004): More than 400,000 Hindu pilgrims travelled to a cave shrine in the disputed region of Kashmir, braving separatist violence, harsh weather and terrain, officials said, on a month-long pilgrimage that ended peacefully on Monday. Madan Lal Mantoo, spokesman for the annual pilgrimage to the 13,500 feet (4,115 metres) high Amarnath shrine, said a record number of visitors visited the shrine on the pilgrimage since the cave was discovered by a Muslim shepherd centuries ago. At the shrine, Hindus...

SRINAGAR, Aug 27 (2004):Police burst hundreds of tear gas shells and fired in the air in Kashmir on Friday to disperse thousands of Muslims protesting against the U.S.-backed offensive in Iraq's holy city of Najaf, police said. More than 5,000 protesters carrying photographs of Iraqi and Iranian Shi'ite leaders threw stones at police in Srinagar, the biggest city in the Indian sector of disputed Kashmir. "Down with America," the protesters shouted, punching their fists in the air near Zadibal, a Shi'ite-dominated area...

SRINAGAR, Aug 19 (2004): Gulzar Ahmad, owner of a handicraft shop near scenic Dal lake in Srinagar, the main city of Muslim-majority Kashmir, recently changed the language of his outlet's signboard from English to Hebrew. It was another sign of the new acceptance of visitors from Israel. For the second successive year, Israelis top the list of foreign tourists visiting a region where tens of thousands have been killed in a revolt by Muslim militants against Indian rule. "Seventy percent of my customers are Israelis,"...

SRINAGAR, Aug 19 (2004):Soldiers killed the head of a guerrilla group fighting for Kashmir's merger with Pakistan in a gunbattle on Thursday, hours before President Abdul Kalam began a rare visit to the region, an official said. Manzoorul Islam, identified as the head of the Jamait-ul-Mujahideen, was in a car in Srinagar when the gunbattle erupted after soldiers signalled the vehicle to stop. Another militant who was in the car in a residential part of the city escaped, a spokesman of paramilitary Border Security...

SRINAGAR, Aug 10 (2004): The dialogue between the Indian government and Kashmiri separatists appeared to have broken down on Tuesday after the New Delhi government set conditions for the talks which were rejected by separatists. The apparent breakdown of the dialogue is also a setback for the broader peace process between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan. Since coming to power in May, India's new Congress-led coalition government has insisted the next round of talks with Kashmiri separatists should take...

ISLAMABAD, Aug 5 (2004): The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir should be settled well within three years, Pakistan's president said in a newspaper interview on Thursday, as talks began to extend a ceasefire in the Himalayan region. President Pervez Musharraf told the Dawn newspaper he was not trying to impose a deadline, but he wanted a speedy end to nearly five decades of argument which has led to two wars between the South Asian nuclear rivals. "I have not asked them to give any timeframe," Musharraf...

SRINAGAR, Aug 5 (2004): Muslim militants stormed an Indian army camp in Kashmir's main city, killing eight soldiers, just hours before Indian and Pakistani defence officials were to discuss the region's fragile peace process. Wednesday night's attack on the heavily guarded camp in an upscale residential district of Srinagar came just as the soldiers were sitting down to dinner, police said. One militant was killed inside the compound after exchanging sporadic fire with soldiers through the night. The whereabouts of...