NEW DELHI (Islamweb & News Agencies) - India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday endorsed efforts to seek peace with bitter foe Pakistan but warned that the ``holy war'' mentality in Pakistan could stand in the way of dialogue.
A BJP national executive committee resolution addressing the recent abortive India-Pakistan summit said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's government should hinge its strategy on Islamabad's future attitude toward New Delhi.
It said New Delhi's friendly overtures for peace with Islamabad should not be interpreted as a sign of India's weakness in the face of what the statement called an insurgency in the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir which has killed over 30,000 people.
Summit talks earlier this month between Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to resolve over five decades of animosity between the nuclear-capable rivals ended in deadlock over the Kashmir dispute and India's concern over what it says is Pakistan-backed separatism in Kashmir.
Islamabad denies New Delhi's charge that it aids separatist rebels in the strife-torn state. But it says it provides moral and diplomatic support to the freedom struggle of the local people fighting Indian rule since late 1989. (Read photo caption below)
The two leaders, however, said they would continue talking even though their first summit in more than two years failed to produce even a joint statement.
Vajpayee's BJP has traditionally advocated a tough line against Pakistan, and some of its hardline Hindu affiliates have questioned the wisdom of seeking peace with Islamabad, blamed for the revolt in Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir.
The prime minister told reporters in the eastern city of Bhubaneshwar he was not under any pressure from BJP hard-liners to call off his proposed visit to Islamabad to continue talks.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Indian Youth Congress activists burns a Pakistan's flag in Amritsar, India, Friday, July 27, 2001 in protest of recent killings of Hindu devotees by Kashmiri Resistance men during their "Amarnath Yatra" a hindu pilgrimage in Kashmir. Activists blaimed Pakistan for helping the millitants to spread militancy in the disputed Kashmir valley. (AP Photo/Aman Sharma)