Indian PM wants 'normalised relations with Pakistan'

India’s prime minister today said he wants “normalised” relations with Pakistan amid rising tensions between the South Asian rivals over the Mumbai attacks.

Speaking at an election rally in Indian Kashmir today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh India says he hopes relations between the neighbours can be “normalised,” but that this “cannot happen as long as our neighbouring country allows its soil to be used against us”.

Singh travelled to Kashmir after a breakfast meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in New Delhi. The two leaders discussed the recent attacks on Mumbai, which have been blamed on a Pakistani-based Kashmiri militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan to crack down on militant groups operating out of Pakistan.

Islamabad has carried out raids on a charity believed to be linked to Lashkar, but also urged India to provide further evidence.

India finds itself in the awkward position of having to investigate terrorist attacks hand-in-hand with its long-time enemy. The two countries have fought three wars against each other since independence. Despite a peace process that began in 2004, tensions remain high.

Singh addressed the rally ahead of the sixth of seven rounds of voting in state elections. The elections for Kashmir’s state legislature started November 17 and end December 24. Voters cast their ballots in the fifth phase yesterday as scattered clashes between protesters and government forces left one person dead.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Muslim-majority Kashmir, where most people favour independence from mainly Hindu India or a merger with Pakistan. Kashmir is divided between the two rival countries and both claim it in its entirety.

Lashkar and about a dozen other militant separatist groups have been fighting since 1989 to end Indian rule. The uprising and a subsequent Indian crackdown have killed about 68,000 people, most of them civilians.

Separatist leaders have called for a boycott of the elections, saying they will entrench India’s hold in the region.