India Offers Plan to Ease Kashmir Split

India proposed seven steps to improve ties across the heavily fortified front line dividing Kashmir on Saturday as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made his first visit here since a bitter summit four years ago.

Musharraf is set to hold talks on the Kashmir dispute and other issues with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today after attending a cricket match between the two nations’ teams in the Indian capital.

India’s proposals include setting up several meeting points along the divide to reunite families, increasing bus service and communication links, renewing trade and taking steps to promote tourism in the long-disputed territory, two-thirds of which is controlled by India.

Musharraf’s response is expected in his meeting with Singh today, after which the leaders plan to issue a statement, Indian officials said.

In the past, Pakistan has been wary of measures that it fears would make it easier for India to permanently divide Kashmir.

The Pakistani leader’s first stop Saturday was in the western state of Rajasthan, where he visited the shrine of a Sufi saint, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, in Ajmer.

“We pray here that the coming times will see improved ties and an atmosphere of peace between India and Pakistan,” said Musharraf, who visited the shrine with his wife. “We pray that the two nations will grow and prosper, as will the people of both nations, which will be possible only in an environment of peace.”

Musharraf has repeatedly called on India to move quickly toward a negotiated solution to the 57-year dispute over Kashmir, which caused two of the three wars between India and Pakistan since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.

But India prefers a more gradual process of improving trade, travel and cultural links while pressing Pakistan to end any support for militants who continue to battle Indian security forces in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The most significant of those steps was taken this month as bus passengers from India and Pakistan crossed the Line of Control dividing the territory for the first time since its partition in 1947.

As Musharraf spoke of reconciliation in India, police in Pakistan detained Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of exiled opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, and arrested thousands of members of their Pakistan People’s Party, including several top officials.

Pakistani police took Zardari into “protective custody” on his arrival at the Lahore airport from Dubai, where he was visiting his wife. Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, has threatened to jail Bhutto, a former prime minister, on corruption charges if she returns to Pakistan.

Late Saturday, thousands of Zardari’s supporters remained in custody, party officials said. At least 15,000 party workers and leaders have been detained in recent days, according to spokesman Nazir Dhoki.

Police also reportedly beat journalists and party leaders accompanying Zardari on the flight, and for three days, they prevented party supporters from taking trains to Lahore for a homecoming rally.

Zardari was freed in November after eight years of detention on corruption charges.

Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao told reporters in Peshawar that Zardari was free, without restrictions on his movements. Sherpao said the government was protecting Zardari, whom many Pakistanis see as his wife’s likely successor as opposition leader.

Earlier, in a speech delivered by telephone to a gathering of PPP supporters in Lahore, Zardari said his party did not want a confrontation with the government.

“But they have created a situation under which we have no other option but to launch street agitation,” he added. “We will launch a movement to fill jails.”

Musharraf, on the eve of his trip to India, described Indian leader Singh as a sincere person who wanted to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Like Indian officials, Musharraf said he expected no breakthrough at today’s meeting but suggested that India is moving toward resolving the stalemate.

“I know that there is much more to it than what is upfront,” Musharraf told Reuters news agency Thursday in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. “We know what their people are saying, but ... everything is not said upfront.”

Musharraf’s tone on the current visit is more measured than it was during a failed summit in 2001. That event was followed by a militant attack on India’s Parliament that almost provoked a fourth war between the nations, which have nuclear weapons.

An agreement to settle the Kashmir conflict was nearly reached at the 2001 summit, but the effort collapsed at the last minute amid accusations of betrayal from both sides.

Times staff writer Watson reported from New Delhi and special correspondent Zaidi from Islamabad.