June 25, 2013

INDIAN PRIME MINISTER LANDS IN KASHMIR, DAY AFTER MILITANT ATTACK

[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.