India seeks unconditional talks with Kashmir panel

India will attach no conditions to peace talks with Kashmir's political separatists, the home minister said yesterday, in an attempt to resume a dialogue, stalled due to new terms set by New Delhi.

Shivraj Patil's comments came a day after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held his first face-to-face talks with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in New York to push forward a sluggish peace process that was getting stuck over Kashmir.

"We attach great importance to our discussions with Hurriyat... we have said that we will talk unconditionally," Patil said in an interview to the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.

"Let them say whatever they want to say, we will say whatever we have to say and we will find out on what topics we can agree," Patil said.

The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella alliance of two dozen Kashmiri political groups, began unprecedented talks with the Hindu nationalist-led government in New Delhi earlier this year to help end the Kashmir revolt.

But the talks appeared to have broken down last month after Singh's centrist Congress party-led government, which took power in May, insisted they be held within the constitution, which says Kashmir is an integral part of India.

That position is not acceptable to Hurriyat and alliance leaders rejected it saying it prejudiced their demands for independence or merger with Pakistan.

Patil told PTI a formal invitation would be sent to Hurriyat leaders when he visits Kashmir next month and added that he would be "happy to meet them" during the visit.

There was no immediate comment from Hurriyat to the change in New Delhi's position.

Patil's announcement coincided with a new hope in South Asia following the Singh-Musharraf talks on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly.

Their meeting produced no apparent breakthroughs but there was considerable upbeat rhetoric as the two leaders said they had made a fresh start towards ending decades of enmity.

Mufti Mohammad Syed, the chief minister of Indian Kashmir said the talks raised hopes of lasting peace in the troubled region where more than 40,000 people have died in a 15-year revolt against New Delhi's rule.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee launched a fresh bid to make peace with Pakistan when the party was in power last year, criticised the outcome of the Singh-Musharraf meeting.

The joint statement issued after the talks on Friday did not do enough to address New Delhi's concerns over Pakistan's clandestine support to Kashmiri guerrillas, said Yashwant Sinha, BJP spokesman and a former foreign minister.