Posted on 09/19/2002 5:18:05 PM PDT by knighthawk
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, who lost her husband to a suicide bomber, donned a bulletproof jacket and campaigned for her party in Kashmir on Thursday, making the first public speech by a senior Indian official in the insurgency-wracked province in 15 years.
Defying threats from Islamic militants, Gandhi spoke to the crowd of shared pain and how state legislative elections can improve the disputed Himalayan province's future.
``I want to bring you some balm,'' she said from behind a bulletproof screen and surrounded by elite commandos in Srinigar, the state's summer capital. ``This is an election for the future of each Kashmiri. You have to write your destiny with your own hands.''
Her husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was killed in 1991 by a suicide bomber from separatist rebels fighting in Sri Lanka. Gandhi's mother, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguard in 1984 for ordering the army into the Sikh's holiest shrine in northern Indian to oust militants living there.
``You are living in the shadow of terror and pain. Today, people are afraid to step into the Kashmir that was once called paradise,'' Gandhi told 1,500 supporters of her Congress Party at a cricket stadium, her voice cracking with emotion.
The campaign for the Kashmiri elections — spread out over four days in September and October — has been marked by an upsurge in attacks by Pakistan-based insurgents fighting for Kashmir's secession from India or merger with Muslim Pakistan. The second phase of elections is next week.
The Islamic militants have demanded Kashmiris boycott the election, claiming it is rigged in favor of pro-India parties and warning of retaliation against those who participate. Nearly 100 political figures — including a state minister — have been killed so far during the campaign.
India thinks a successful election could help defuse the insurgency, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives in the past 13 years. Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state.
Gandhi had received no overt threat in Kashmir, local officials said, but three people were wounded Tuesday when a grenade exploded at her Congress party's state headquarters.
Sounding a note of warning, a U.S. official in New Delhi said that infiltration by Islamic militants into Indian territory from Pakistan has increased. The cross-border incursions are a source of tension between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Blackwill told reporters that ``infiltration is going on, and in our judgment it increased in August and September.'' He added: ``In June and July it was down.''
Pakistan rejected the ambassador's claim. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Thursday said his government is neither allowing, nor sponsoring infiltration across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between Indian and Pakistan.
India says Pakistan trains, arms and funds the insurgents — a charge Islamabad denies. The nations have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, which both claim in its entirety.
In May, India and Pakistan were pushed to the brink of another war, but tension subsided after Musharraf promised to permanently end the infiltrations.
On Thursday, militants detonated a bomb against an army truck in Bandipore, north of Srinagar. The blast and ensuing gunbattle killed one militant and wounded five soldiers and two civilians, said Border Security Force spokesman Neeraj Sharma.
Also Thursday, suspected militants attacked a government-run school, shooting to death a teacher and a 16-year student in remote Jamlaan village, about 100 miles north of Jammu, the state's winter capital, police said.
The last top Indian leader to make a public speech in Kashmir was Gandhi's husband Rajiv during an election rally in 1987 — four years before he was killed.
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