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Time ripe for Kashmir pact, says Pak FM

Tight security for fourth bus run following violence

AFP, Kuala Lumpur/ Srinagar
The time is ripe for a deal between Pakistan and India on Kashmir and the two countries should seize the opportunity to end the long-running dispute, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said yesterday.
"At the moment conditions are particularly propitious," he told reporters during a stopover in Kuala Lumpur on his way home from visits
to Australia and New Zealand.
"Both leaders have to show courage and take difficult decisions and the fact there are peace constituencies in both countries should be a help to them," Kasuri said.
The two countries, which have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, last month declared a drive for peace "irreversible".
Since 1989, more than 40,000 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence in Kashmir,
which is held in part but claimed in full by both India and Pakistan.
Kasuri said a major confidencebuilding measure in the search for a solution to the Kashmir issue would be an agreement on the disputed Siachen glacier in talks beginning on May 25.
"It is doable. I think if we have agreement on this it will act as a major confidence-building measure. It will also help in the process of resolution of Jammu and Kashmir.
"It requires just a bit of political will. The defence secretaries need to try to convince each other that their fear and apprehension is misplaced."
The dispute over the 21,000-foot (6,363-metre) glacier, which overlooks India, Pakistan and China, dates back to the first war between India and Pakistan in 1948.
Meanwhile, passengers left Indian Kashmir's main city of Srinagar on the fourth transKashmir bus run amid heavy security following an upsurge of violence in the revolt-hit state.
Police cars, sirens wailing, and armoured vehicles accompanied the two buses as they set off carrying 32 passengers bound for the capital of the Pakistani zone, Muzaffarabad, for reunions with relatives and friends.
"The buses are escorted by police and paramilitary armoured vehicles and the road has been searched for mines and booby traps," a police spokesman said.
Two buses also left from Muzaffarabad Thursday morning, officials said.
The latest bus run comes amid soaring guerrilla violence in Indian Kashmir that has targeted Srinagar, known as the urban rebel hub, in particular.
During the last 10 days, 10 people have been killed and 104 injured in bomb blasts and shootings by suspected Islamic rebels alone in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir where rebels are battling New Delhi's rule.
A militant outfit opposing the bus
service, seen as promoting peace in the Himalayan region, claimed responsibility for the first blast May 11, a car bomb that killed two people and injured 34.
No group has claimed responsibility for the second blast, a grenade attack near a school the following day that killed a mother and daughter and injured 50 people, many of them students.
The bus service, launched April 7, established the first link in nearly 60 years between the two sides of the territory held in part by nucleararmed Pakistan and India but claimed in full by both.
The bus is seen by many as the most significant fruit of a slow-moving 16-month peace process between India and Pakistan which have fought two of their three wars overs over Kashmir.
Over 40,000 people have died in the insurgency since the revolt erupted in 1989, according to an official count. Separatists say the toll is at least double that.