India's Prime Minister to visit disputed Kashmir border

The shooting of Abdul Ghani Lone, a moderate, soft-spoken separatist leader who sought dialogue with India to bring self-determination for Kashmiris, comes at a time of heightened tension over the disputed Himalayan region.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the murder of Lone, 70. The assailants got away.

Before his death, Lone had said Indian authorities had tried to kill him and that an Islamic militant group fighting to separate Kashmir from India had threatened his life.

As Lone’s body and that of a security guard lay on the lawn of his Srinagar home, surrounded by wailing women, his son blamed Pakistan and its Inter Services Intelligence spy agency.

‘‘Pakistan and ISI killed him,’’ Sajjad Lone told The Associated Press Television Network. He gave no explanation.

He and his father have urged the Pakistan-based Islamic militants who have fought Indian forces in Kashmir for 12 years to give the region’s war-shattered residents a chance to find a nonviolent way of expressing their desires for self-government.

‘‘He was working for peace and for this he had to give up his life,’’ Vajpayee told reporters as he arrived in Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state. ‘‘Lone’s death means we shall have to work harder for peace to return to Kashmir.’’

Vajpayee came to visit victims of an attack by suspected Islamic militants on an army base last week that killed 34 people, mostly wives and children of soldiers, increasing tension among 1 million troops posted on both sides of the border since December.

India blamed Pakistan and Islamic militants based there for the attack, expelled the Pakistani ambassador, and reorganised maritime and ground forces under the military. An extra 3,000 soldiers were sent to the frontier on Tuesday.

Vajpayee planned Wednesday to visit the border, where shelling, and mortar and small arms fire have traded for five days by both armies. Dozens of civilians and soldiers have been killed on both sides of the border.

Pakistan’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Kader Jaffer, said the nuclear-armed neighbours were close to war.

‘‘They are very close,’’ he told BBC radio yesterday. ‘‘And therefore it is necessary for all our friends to get together, bring sanity where there is total insanity.’’

Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao was vague when asked if the two countries were on the brink of war.

‘‘Nowhere has India been belligerent, but things have reached a pass where India’s sovereign interests have to be defended,’’ she said.

The two nations’ competing claims for all of Kashmir has provoked two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

The region is divided between them by a 1972 ceasefire line, called the Line of Control.

The United States, Britain and the European Union have urged both countries to exercise restraint and recommended talks, which Pakistan favours.

Washington said it would send Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the region later this month.

India has refused talks until militants based in Pakistan stop crossing the border to stage attacks.

India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and financing the guerrillas, who have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence or merger with Pakistan.

Islamabad says it has no control over the militants and only supports the ideology of the ‘‘freedom fighters’’.