Srinagar, Kashmir - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Thursday that New Delhi was not averse to reopening peace talks with Pakistan but asserted that there would be no real progress in the negotiations unless Islamabad cracked down on terrorists targeting India. A day after extending "a hand of friendship" to Pakistan, Singh said India was not setting any conditions on restarting the 5-year-old peace dialogue that it suspended after November's Mumbai attacks.
The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant outfit was blamed for the Mumbai carnage that claimed more than 160 lives.
Since the attacks, Indian authorities have demanded Pakistan action against anti-India militant groups, such as LeT, saying it was key to resuming their dialogue.
Asked whether Pakistani action against militants was a condition for resuming dialogue, Singh said on a visit to insurgency-hit India-administered Kashmir: "If day-in-and-day-out terrorist attacks continue to take the precious lives of our citizens, we cannot create the requisite atmosphere for meaningful negotiations, so it is not a pre-condition - it is a practical way of looking at things".
"Negotiations which are essential, (for) which we are prepared, cannot make much headway unless and until Pakistan brings under effective control these terrorist groups," Singh told reporters in the state capital Srinagar at the end of his visit to the region.
Singh also said India was not satisfied by the action taken by Islamabad against those who organized the Mumbai attacks.
"We are not satisfied," he said. "That goes without saying. We hope Pakistan will take effective measures to bring to justice all the perpetrators."
Singh also rejected as "false and far-fetched" allegations by Pakistani authorities that India was fomenting unrest within Pakistan by funding Taliban fighters and fuelling insurgency in its south-western province of Balochistan.
"We are the victims of terrorism aided and abetted from the Pakistan side," he said. "Both references to Balochistan and what is said about the Taliban are totally false."
Singh concluded a two-day tour to the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, which has seen a violent secessionist insurgency that has claimed more than 45,000 lives over the past two decades.
Accompanied by important Indian leaders, including the ruling United Progressive Alliance chairwoman Sonia Gandhi, Singh on Wednesday inaugurated a train link that completes a 129-kilometre railway network in the region.
Singh also renewed the Indian federal government's offer to negotiate with separatist leaders and held talks with mainstream political parties in Srinagar.
Singh said he hoped that his appeal for talks would be reciprocated by the separatists.
"I believe that a new chapter is opening in the peace process in the state, and we are turning a corner," Singh said.
"Violence must end in Jammu and Kashmir," he added. "We are willing to carry all stakeholders with us. We need to end all the violence to begin a dialogue."
