The New York Times

Friday, September 24, 1999

Kashmir Separatists Stopped by India on Way to the U.N.

By CELIA W. DUGGER

NEW DELHI, India -- Indian immigration authorities Thursday prevented leaders of an alliance of Kashmiri separatist groups from leaving the airport here for New York, where they had planned to seek support for their cause at the United Nations, alliance officials said.

The alliance, the All Parties Freedom Conference, is an umbrella organization of 24 Kashmiri separatist groups.

It has been advocating that the people of Kashmir, the lone state in predominantly Hindu India that has a Muslim majority, boycott the national elections that end on Oct. 3 as a protest against the Indian government.

One leader who was stopped at the airport, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has maintained that the status of Kashmir is not a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, but a political issue.

The Kashmiri people should have the right, by vote, to decide whether to be independent, join India or join Muslim Pakistan, he has said.

Farooq has traveled before to the United States and met American officials in the hope that the Washington would intervene in the dispute.

Farooq and Maulana Mohammad Abbas Ansari, executive council members of the conference, had checked their luggage and received their boarding passes when immigration authorities stopped them and took their passports and tickets, conference officials said.

They were planning to attend the annual meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference, as well as make their case at the United Nations.

"Authorities told them that the Home Ministry had given orders that they not be allowed to leave the country," said A.M. Banday, bureau chief of the Delhi office of the conference.

A spokeswoman for the government said she had not been informed about the case. Officials in the Foreign and Interior Ministries would not comment to Reuters.

The last few weeks have been tumultuous in Kashmir. Militant groups have been implicated in the assassination of a Hindu nationalist parliamentary candidate, as well as in many attacks on soldiers and police officers.

Kashmiri independence leaders and experts on the region say the fear of violence, as well as the Kashmiri people's disillusionment with Indian government have contributed to the low turnout in the election.

The turnout has been the lowest anywhere in India. In the summer capital, Srinagar, 15 percent of the people voted. In another parliamentary constituency, the turnout was 27 percent.

Nationally, the turnout has been 58 percent.