India pledges to work hard for peace in Kashmir

India said today it would work hard to achieve peace with Pakistan during a visit by its military ruler but blamed its neighbour for fuelling the Islamic rebellion in the disputed province of Kashmir.

‘‘We believe that we have to move beyond the confines of history and unless India and Pakistan address the future ... we will be causing a great damage to the peoples of our country,’’ Jaswant Singh, India’s foreign and defence minister, told reporters at a news conference in the Indian capital New Delhi.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee surprised Pakistan last week by writing a letter to its military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, inviting him to India for peace talks and to ‘‘walk the high road’’ to reconciliation.

Pakistan immediately accepted. Dates have not been set for General Musharraf’s visit, which will be the first meeting between officials from the two nuclear-armed neighbours in two years.

Singh said today that the reversal in India’s policy and the willingness to talk was caused by ‘‘changed circumstances’’. He did not specify.

‘‘India’s position is not being absolutist. We have made an assessment on the basis of the situation,’’ he said.

In his letter, Vajpayee said the two sides needed to renew talks in order to address outstanding issues including Kashmir, the Himalayan region that is the centrepiece of five decades of hostility between India and Pakistan.

The enmity has spilled over into three wars, two of them over the rival territorial claims to the mountain province.

Two-thirds of Jammu-Kashmir is controlled by India, the rest by Pakistan, and both claim the entire territory.

Singh reiterated India’s claim today, saying: ‘‘The government is a servant of Parliament and the Parliament has said that the whole of Jammu-Kashmir is a part of India and that has remained unaltered.’’

India alleges that Pakistan arms, trains and funds Islamic guerrillas in the region, helping them enter Indian-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan says it has no control over the rebels’ movement, and that it provides only moral, not material support.

‘‘That terrorism is encouraged and abetted by Pakistan is a fact of life,’’ Singh said, returning to the sharp-edged rhetoric that has marked relations between the two countries for five decades.

‘‘It is really for Pakistan to address itself to the question of what it wants by way of long-term relations with India.’’

The last time heads of state from the two sides met was in February 1999, when Vajpayee visited Lahore, Pakistan, on a peace mission, and he and former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration, vowing to pursue peace.

Within months, however, hundreds of Pakistan-based guerrillas, whom India claimed were Pakistani soldiers, had occupied the icy heights of Kargil in northernmost Indian-controlled Kashmir. India fought back the incursion in a 50-day confrontation that witnessed fierce artillery shelling from both sides.

Then Sharif was overthrown and Musharraf, whom Indian security officials accused of planning and executing the Kargil attack, took over.