

Differing agendas ahead of talks India says three of its soldiers have been killed in clashes with militants in Indian-administered Kashmir. Clashes began early on Tuesday morning in the Chinkipora area in Sopore town, 54km (33 miles) north of Srinagar city. Indian border guards in Kashmir said they came under fire from Pakistan on Wednesday, a claim denied by Islamabad. The two nuclear-armed neighbours are due to meet for talks in Delhi on Thursday - the first formal discussions since the 2008 Mumbai (Bombay) attacks. The Kashmir dispute has been at the centre of decades of hostility between India and Pakistan and the cause of two of their three wars since independence from British rule in 1947. 'Tough fight' Thousands of Indian troops are fighting a two decade-old separatist insurgency in Kashmir. The BBC's Altaf Hussain in Srinagar says these are the highest casualties suffered by Indian forces in an operation in the disputed territory so far this year. Hundreds of thousands of troops are based in Kashmir A police officer told the BBC that the militants were armed with grenade launchers and other sophisticated weapons and were putting up a tough fight in Sopore. Fighting continued until late on Tuesday and the military operation resumed on Wednesday morning, although there have been no reports of firing so far. Wednesday's shooting further south in Indian-administered Kashmir is alleged to have taken place in the Samba area. "The firing from across the border started early morning. A BSF [Border Security Force] personnel was injured," Vinod Sharma, a spokesman for the border guards, told Reuters news agency. Nadeem Raza, a spokesman for Pakistan's paramilitary Rangers, told Reuters: "Our troops were not involved in any firing. There may be some problem on their own side." Talks The foreign secretaries of the two countries will meet on Thursday in the Indian capital. SOUTIK BISWAS'S INDIA India and Pakistan are not two ordinary sparring neighbours - they are nuclear-armed estranged siblings with a history of three wars, brinkmanship and endless sniping



Read Soutik's blog Correspondents say the talks could eventually pave the way for the resumption of the formal peace process broken off after the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 174 people were killed, nine of them gunmen. India says that the attacks were carried out by Pakistan-based militants. There has been a spate of clashes in the past few months along the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Pakistan wants to discuss a range of issues, including water and boundary disputes, as well as Kashmir. But Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said on Monday that Indian concerns about militant groups based in Pakistan would form the main focus of the talks with her Pakistani counterpart.



Bookmark with: Delicious

Digg

reddit

Facebook

StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version