NEW DELHI, Feb 10, (1992) – India has laid mines along its frontier with Pakistan to stop a proposed mass march across the border by Moslem separatists fighting for independence in Kashmir, news reports said on Monday.
The local government in the Indian-held part of Kashmir said mines were laid at the border on the route of the march planned for Tuesday.
“All arrangements have been made to deal with any possible intrusion,” United News of India news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying in Jammu, winter capital of the mountainous Himalayan region.
In Pakistan-held Kashmir, the authorities felled trees and built rock barriers on some roads to stop buses carrying Kashmiri activists from reaching Muzaffarabad near the border.
The march has sparked fresh tension between India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. Two of their conflicts were over Kashmir, which both countries claim.
India has been fighting an increasingly bloody secessionist war with Moslem militants for two years in the two-thirds of Kashmir it governs. Delhi claims the separatists are funded and trained by Pakistan, a charge denied by Islamabad.
In the face of rising tension between the two countries, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the weekend banned the march by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). He said he could not let the pro-independence group put innocent lives in front of Indian firing squads.
In Srinagar, the largest city in Kashmir and the hotbed of the insurgency, a JKLF leader said the Pakistani move to block the march was “betraying the people of Kashmir in their hour of need.”
“In the past also, we have been deceived by the people we considered our friends and well-wishers,” said Javed Ahmed Mir, JKLF commander-in-chief.
The JKLF is the main separatist group in Kashmir demanding independence. Other militias advocate the merger of the Moslem-dominated region with Islamic Pakistan.
At least 6,000 people have been killed in the insurrection, mainly in battles between the militants and Indian security forces.
