Kashmiris vote against background of militant deaths and army violence

INDIAN-RULED Kashmir ended the first stage of state assembly elections yesterday against a backdrop of violence and in the shadow of a tense confrontation between nuclear powers India and Pakistan.

Indian security forces said they had killed 17 militants who tried to cross into the territory from Pakistan, but despite violence elsewhere authorities expressed satisfaction with what they said was a 44% turnout by the time polls closed.

It was lower than the statewide 54% at the last election in 1996, but some of the most volatile regions, including all border constituencies, voted yesterday. The figure could be boosted when less violent constituencies vote in the weeks ahead.

Although no major violence was reported during voting, eight rebels were killed in two operations on Monday near the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

Nine others died late on Sunday, officials said, while two men were wounded when a bomb exploded near a polling station.

Paramilitary police, in flak jackets and toting automatic weapons, guarded polling stations during the first of four voting days between now and October 8 in the disputed Himalayan region at the centre of a military stand-off between India and Pakistan.

Voters were frisked before entering polling booths in mainly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state, where more than 440 people were killed during a bloody election campaign.

Pakistan, which India has accused of trying to sabotage the election, dismissed it as unwanted by Kashmiris.

"The people of Kashmir have rejected those elections," foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told a news conference before the turnout was announced.

"We know from past experience. . .what kind of elections they were. What happens in the present exercise, we will get to know as the process goes on."

Although many Kashmiris did not vote frightened by the violence and disillusioned by Indian rule some waited six hours in the hot late autumn sun to cast their ballot. Some villagers accused soldiers of storming their homes and beating them to force a large turnout, an accusation also made in the 1996 election.

"They beat me with rifle butts when I refused to come out of my home," Mukhtar Ahmad said in Singhpora village just outside Srinagar.

One frightened youth in Natnusa village said he had only voted after army threats: "Indian army loudspeakers and also the speakers of the local mosque told us to come out to vote or face the consequences."

The main moderate separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, also accused the military of forcing people to vote.

"Nowhere in the world are elections held amidst the roar of the gun, pools of blood, custodial killings, heinous violations of human rights...," Hurriyat chief Abdul Gani Bhat told reporters.