[Mr. Sharif has made reconciliatory gestures toward India and spoken of
renewing dialogue to resolve the long-pending dispute over Kashmir between
India and Pakistan. Mr. Singh is widely expected to make a significant policy
statement on Kashmir and Pakistan.]
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
NEW DELHI— Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has arrived in the state
of Jammu and Kashmir on a two-day visit despite a deadly militant attack late
Monday in the summer capital Srinagar, which killed eight Indian soldiers and
injured at least thirteen.
Mr. Singh is inaugurating a hydroelectric power plant in the Jammu
region of the state today.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Singh will inaugurate an 18-kilometer
stretch that has been added to a train line running through the Kashmir valley.
The ambitious train project is not unlike China’s train link to Tibet and aims
to connect Kashmir to the north Indian plains. Tracks for the most difficult part
of the train project, a 100-kilometer stretch through fragile and very high
mountains between Jawahar Tunnel at Banihal at Udhampur town in southern Jammu
province, are yet to be built and might take years.
Although the agenda of his visit is apparently tied to infrastructure
and economic development, Mr. Singh is on his first visit to the disputed
region since the swearing in of Nawaz Sharif as the new prime minister of
Pakistan, so foreign policy may be a focus.
Mr. Sharif has made reconciliatory gestures toward India and spoken of
renewing dialogue to resolve the long-pending dispute over Kashmir between
India and Pakistan. Mr. Singh is widely expected to make a significant policy
statement on Kashmir and Pakistan.
The Indian Prime Minister has been trying to manage relations with the
country’s neighbor and old rival Pakistan. Mr. Singh was instrumental in
starting a back-channel dialogue with former Pakistan President Pervez
Musharraf, and their negotiators came close to a grand bargain before Mr. Musharraf
was ousted from power in 2007. Mr. Singh also faces the burden of failing to
implement any recommendations on Kashmir that several official committees
established by him over the years have made.
A “working group” established by him in 2006 had recommended
restoration of autonomous status for the Indian-administered-Kashmir and
another had called for repealing the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers
Act, which authorizes Indian troops stationed in Kashmir to shoot any person
they suspect of being a threat. The controversial law also protects the troops
from prosecution in civilian courts unless India’s Home Ministry waives such
protection, which is rare.
Further, Mr. Singh’s government has been besieged by allegations of
graft and faces a tough election next year with a challenge from the
controversial hardliner Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who is
the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s de-facto candidate for prime
minister.
The chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance and the head of Mr.
Singh’s Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi accompanied Mr. Singh on his visit. The
precariousness of Mr. Singh’s political position is likely to muffle any
significant policy announcement on India-Pakistan dialogue on the prickly
subject of Kashmir.
Separatist leaders in Kashmir have called for a general boycott of Mr.
Singh’s visit and schools and commercial establishments in the Kashmir valley
have been shutdown in response to the boycott and heightened security measures.
Mr. Singh landed in a tense Kashmir and armed soldiers were on a high
alert throughout the region because of the attack that killed the eight
soldiers. In that attack, which took place Monday afternoon a few miles from
the Srinagar airport, where Mr. Singh landed, two militants from Hizbul
Mujahideen, a pro-Pakistan militant group, attacked a convoy of Indian soldiers
passing through southern Srinagar. It was one of the deadliest attacks in
several years in Kashmir.
The attack has punctured the relative calm in Kashmir, which has seen
been attracting more tourists in the past few years. A long-ranging anti-India
insurgency had waned by 2008 and was replaced by mass protests. Kashmir
witnessed several months of intense pro-independence protests in 2010,
accompanied by rock throwing by young Kashmiri men at the Indian troops and
police. Indian troops put down the protests with gunfire; 110 protesters were
killed in 2010 and around 6,000 were arrested in the subsequent crackdown.
There has been increasing talk in official and political circles of
Kashmir returning to “normalcy”— an Indian euphemism describing a state of
relative peace and lack of violence. According to official
statistics, 14 militants and 33 civilians and troops have been killed in
Kashmir in 2013.
The attack on a military convoy before a high-profile visit by an
Indian prime minister to Kashmir is not a new development. It is part of a
pattern as insurgent attacks around such visit draw intense media coverage.
Nine people were killed in militant attacks when Prime Minister Singh visited
Kashmir in 2006 and two people were killed when he visited Srinagar to
inaugurate the first train to run through the Kashmir valley in 2009.
[The case stems from
Pakistan’s activist Supreme Court, where judges have instructed Mr. Sharif to
decide whether Mr. Musharraf should face treason charges. The former army chief
already faces charges in four cases relating to his period of rule from 1999 to
2008.]
By Salman Masood and Declan Walsh
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Monday that his newly installed
government intended to press treason charges against the former military ruler
Pervez Musharraf, setting up a potential clash with Pakistan’s powerful
military.
In a speech to
Parliament on Monday that was sharply critical of military rule, Mr. Sharif
said Mr. Musharraf had to answer for his acts during his years in power,
comments that drew loud applause from Mr. Sharif’s supporters.
But the government has
stopped short of pressing formal charges against Mr. Musharraf because Mr.
Sharif has said he wants to first consult with the country’s other political
parties, casting some doubt over whether the case will proceed.
The case stems from
Pakistan’s activist Supreme Court, where judges have instructed Mr. Sharif to
decide whether Mr. Musharraf should face treason charges. The former army chief
already faces charges in four cases relating to his period of rule from 1999 to
2008.
He has been under house
arrest at his villa outside Islamabad since April, shortly after his return
from years of exile abroad.
The judiciary’s stiff
treatment of Mr. Musharraf has stirred disquiet in parts of the military.
Officers and soldiers are uncomfortable at the sight of a former army chief being
dragged through the courts, a shocking move in a country that the military has
ruled for more than half of its 66-year history.
The military under its
commander, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has largely steered clear of Mr.
Musharraf’s court troubles until now. It has, however, provided him with a
security cordon at his Islamabad home. But treason charges against Mr.
Musharraf, analysts say, could change that picture considerably.
The case against Mr.
Musharraf is based on charges that he subverted the Constitution when he
imposed emergency rule in late 2007. Musharraf supporters have issued dark
hints that should treason charges be applied, the army might forcibly
intervene.
“It would open a
Pandora’s box,” said Ahmad Raza Kasuri, a senior aide to Mr. Musharraf, while
his spokesman described the moves to bring such charges as a “circus.”
“It takes the focus away
from the serious challenges faced by the nation and could result in unnecessary
tension among the various pillars of state, and possibly destabilize the
country,” said Reza Bokhari, the spokesman.
Mr. Sharif is hoping to
prevent a drastic military intervention by seeking cross-party political
support for a treason trial, which could result in the death penalty or life
imprisonment for Mr. Musharraf.
The federal government
will “take political forces into confidence through a consultative process so
that the collective will and wisdom of the people of Pakistan is duly reflected
in further process in this behalf,” Mr. Sharif told Parliament.
Some opposition leaders
have already expressed support for a trial. But Mr. Sharif will also have to
shake off the impression that he is engaged in a judicial witch hunt against an
old enemy.
The two men clashed
bitterly in 1999, when General Musharraf, then the army chief, ousted Mr.
Sharif, the prime minister, in a coup. A year later, Mr. Musharraf banished Mr.
Sharif into exile in Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Sharif returned to
Pakistan in 2007, and his party won a comfortable victory in the May 11
election. Mr. Musharraf, meanwhile, returned from four years in exile to
contest the same election, only to find himself disqualified from the electoral
process.
But the treason charges
are also being stirred by the Supreme Court, led by the independent-minded
chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who is also an old rival of Mr.
Musharraf. Some analysts said the judges had forced Mr. Sharif’s hand.
In the Supreme Court on
Monday, judges questioned the attorney general about whether the government
intended to bring charges.
The government asked for
30 days’ leave, but the court instructed it to return to court and provide
further details on Thursday.
Critics of the charges
argue that Mr. Musharraf was not alone in his actions and that he enjoyed the
support of senior officers and civilian officials when he was in power.
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and
Declan Walsh from Johannesburg.
