India and Pakistan Meet Over Kashmir Dispute : South Asia: Nations resume contacts for first time in 16 months. There is little optimism they can resolve their differences over the border territory.

India and Pakistan, suspicious neighbors who have fought three wars since independence, met Sunday for the first time in 16 months to see if they could narrow their acrimonious differences over the border territory of Kashmir.

“One object of my visit is to check out whether it is the last chance,” Indian Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit, head of his country’s five-member delegation, told reporters after arriving in Islamabad.

The Indian press reported that Dixit is carrying a proposal to make the “line of control” separating Indian- and Pakistani-held parts of Kashmir into an international border, plus assurances that India will grant its share of the mountainous territory greater autonomy.

After the first round of talks, however, the Pakistanis’ chief conclusion was that the Indians had nothing new to offer.

“The reports trickling out of the Foreign Office say that, in sum, the Indians have belied the impression that they would come up with a new formula,” Syed Talat Hussain, assistant editor of the News, an Islamabad daily, said by telephone. “Both sides reiterated known positions.”

The first round of discussions, between Dixit and Pakistani Foreign Secretary Shahryar Khan, lasted about an hour and a half Sunday. Dixit then left by plane for Karachi to see Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

During their meeting, Bhutto challenged India to “take visible steps” to end the widespread brutalities that international and local watchdog groups have accused Indian forces of committing in their battle against Kashmiri separatists.

Dixit, expressing hope that Indo-Pakistani ties would improve markedly as a result of the resumed contacts, gave Bhutto a letter from Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, but the contents were not disclosed, reports from Karachi said.

Today, Dixit is to meet with Sardar Assef Ahmed Ali, the Pakistani foreign minister.

The Pakistanis, who originally spoke hopefully about the negotiations, had become gloomier as the talks neared. Bhutto said she was “not very optimistic” about a breakthrough, and other officials charged India with stepping up repression in Kashmir.

“There is nothing to feel optimistic about--killings are going on, villages are being torched, women are being raped (and) deaths taking place,” Pakistan’s Ali declared on New Year’s Eve.

After a gap in the dialogue at foreign secretary level since August, 1992, the Islamabad talks mark the first time that Kashmir, the chief bone of contention in Indo-Pakistani relations, has been a specific agenda topic.

Pressure to negotiate from the United States, Britain and other countries has been considerable. The Western countries are worried about India’s and Pakistan’s suspected attempts to build or acquire nuclear weapons and ground-to-ground missiles.

An insurgency in the Indian-controlled state of Jammu and Kashmir is now entering its fourth year; India has waged a campaign of brutal repression in reply. The unofficial toll runs as high as 20,000 deaths, mostly of civilians.

“Making people disappear . . . extrajudicial executions, death in custody, all this stuff, frankly there is no excuse for,” Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphael said last October. She also shocked Indians by saying the Clinton Administration considers Kashmir a “disputed territory” that may not necessarily be part of India forever.

Many Pakistanis believe that the Indians are only going through the motions of negotiating as a public relations exercise.

As for the Indians, they believe that the Pakistanis will insist on some major proposal, such as a referendum so that the 7.7 million inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmir can determine their own fate. But New Delhi’s foreign policy Establishment has made it clear that the sovereignty of the Indian state is not negotiable.

The forgotten party to the negotiations seems to be the Kashmiris themselves, many of whom prefer independence.

On the eve of Dixit’s arrival, Indian authorities said Kashmiri militants detonated 14 bombs in the state’s Doda district to protest the Indo-Pakistani talks and sow panic.

BACKGROUND

The historical root of the Kashmir dispute dates to the agony-filled period of August-October, 1947, and the partition of British India. The fate of the princely states was to be determined according to their rulers’ wish, the will of their populace and geography. Maharajah Hari Singh of Kashmir, a Hindu, had dreamed of independence for the “Switzerland of Asia,” but as Pakistani troops poured into the northern and eastern parts of his domain, he signed the Instrument of Accession to India, despite the fact that a majority of his subjects were Muslim. India and Pakistan fought two of their three wars over control of Kashmir, and their soldiers still face off across the Siachen Glacier 20,000 feet above sea level in the Himalayas.