Killing of minister raises fears of new Kashmir eruption

A senior Kashmir politician was shot dead yesterday in a machine-gun attack by suspected Muslim separatists bent on thwarting elections in the disputed territory.

India was quick to blame Pakistan for the assassination, raising fears of a new escalation in the standoff between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, which is focused on Kashmir.

The Law Minister, Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, and a policeman guarding him were shot dead as he addressed an election rally in a Kashmir village. The gunmen then sprayed the audience with bullets, killing five policemen and a civilian before fleeing from the scene. Eight people were injured.

Two Islamic militant groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the largest Pakistan-based group operating in Kashmir, and the previously unknown Al-Arifeen Squad, both claimed responsibility for the attack.

The militants are calling for a boycott of the legislative elections, whose first round is to be held on Monday under a blanket of security. About 32,000 paramilitary soldiers have been deployed across the state to prevent violence during the elections.

The shooting of Mr Lone, who was one of the most tightly guarded Kashmiri politicians, will serve as a warning to other candidates that they are not safe from attack.

Mr Lone was the second politician to be killed during the campaign. Guerrillas shot dead Sheikh Abdul Rehman, an independent candidate, on Friday last week. Another candidate, running for the National Conference, escaped unhurt yesterday when suspected rebels shot at his motorcade.

In a separate attack, suspected militants opened fire at a bus station in Surankot, 125 miles north-west of Jammu, the state's winter capital, killing at least nine people, including four Border Security Force soldiers and a 12-year-old boy, police said. Again, the assailants fled.

In Delhi, the Indian Deputy Prime Minister, Lal Krishna Advani, condemned the violence. "They are attacks intended to subvert the will of the people who would exercise their right of franchise to elect a new assembly and a new government," he said.

Omar Abdullah, the president of the National Conference, and a foreign minister in the federal coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said Mr Lone's killing was an act of cowardice. He blamed Pakistan. "Militants and their patrons in Pakistan were unnerved by the enthusiasm of the people to participate in the elections and so they are resorting to such dastardly acts," he said.

India is hoping for a big turn-out and a peaceful poll to legitimise its rule in the Himalayan state and deflate support for Kashmir separatists.

But the main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, has urged a boycott, saying Kashmiris should first be allowed to fulfill a decades-old United Nations resolution giving them the right to self-determination.

India also says that peaceful elections would be an important test of Pakistan's pledge to stop cross-border incursions by Islamic militants from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir into Indian Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. Pakistan says the incursions have mostly stopped and has dismissed the elections as a farce.

Violence has increased sharply in Kashmir since Delhi announced the elections on 2 August. More than 300 people have been killed since then.

Pakistan and India have been locked in a military face-off all the way along the border after an attack in December on the Indian parliament, which Delhi blamed on guerrillas based in Pakistan.

On Monday, the American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, assured India's Foreign Minister, Yashwant Sinha, in Washington that the United States was pressing Islamabad not to interfere with the elections to be held on Monday and on 24 September, 1 October and 8 October.