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India keeps conditions for talks intact

Islamabad eager for 'ice to melt'

REUTERS, New Delhi
India said it had not changed its conditions for talks with Pakistan on the Kashmir, cooling suggestions that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had softened his position.
During a visit to Kashmir on April 18, Vajpayee urged talks with Pakistan to resolve the J&K crisis.
But Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani said there was nothing new in the offer.
"What Vajpayee has said in Kashmir...is not different from what we have been saying all along as far as talks with Pakistan is concerned," Advani said in an interview to an English daily.
"Our conditions remain the same. He only made it sound like it was a new appeal," said Advani, known for his tough posture against Pakistan's alleged support to Islamic terrorists in J&K.
A day after calling for talks, Vajpayee had also doused some of the enthusiasm over his offer by insisting that Islamabad must first give up support for Islamic terrorists in J&K.
AFP adds: A wave of optimism has swept Pakistanis since India offered to
meet arch-rival Pakistan at the negotiating table, raising hopes of a thaw in a high-stakes stand-off of almost 18 months that has seen transport, communications and diplomatic links cut or scaled back.
"Ice is melting in summer, giving a sign of hope to millions on both sides of the border," Afrasiab Khattak, who heads the independent Human Rights Commission, told AFP.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee made the offer of talks last week during a rally in Indian Kashmir, after months of spurning Pakistan's repeated pleas for dialogue.
Ties were all but severed after a deadly shooting attack on India's parliament in December 2001, in which 14 people including the five gunmen were killed.
New Delhi blamed the attack on Pakistan-based militant groups, tensions skyrocketed and the hostile neighbours mobilised a million troops to their shared frontier.
They only began withdrawing troops in October, after teetering on the brink of their fourth war which many feared would go nuclear.
The last formal talks between the
nuclear neighbours were at a summit in the Indian city of Agra in July 2001.
The prospect of a thaw in relations has sent a glimmer of hope through hundreds of thousands people in Pakistan, a state created out of India for South Asia's Muslims as Britain granted the subcontinent independence in 1947.
The divided families have been unable to see their relatives in India, with road and rail travel severed to Pakistan's eastern neighbour, and air travel only possible via Dubai or Kabul to the west.
And that's if they can get a visa, a process which has become near impossible during the stand-off.
"It's my dream, and I may die with this dream, to see people of both countries freely visit each other in a peaceful atmosphere," said Fatima Hasan, 70, who migrated to Pakistan from New Delhi in the first months after partition in 1947.
Abdus Sattar, 55, used to travel once a year to India to visit his family.
"I am a poor man and I used to go there every year by train. But now I can't because I can't afford air ticket, and that too has to be via Dubai," he complained.