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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (48273)	4/7/2005 9:23:41 PM
From: JD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50167

Kashmiris Cross Ceasefire Line Raising Peace Hopes By SOMINI SENGUPTA Published: April 8, 2005 LINE OF CONTROL, Kashmir, April 7 - This afternoon, Kashmiris walked across a bridge that had been destroyed 50 years ago in a battle between India and Pakistan. As they did, they were garlanded with marigolds and offered plates of sweets. One man coming from the Pakistani side to the Indian side fell on his knees and kissed the ground. This crossing had been suspended since the violent partition of the subcontinent in 1947, and the India-Pakistan war that accompanied it. Until today, it has been extremely difficult - if not impossible - for Kashmiri families living on both sides to get visas and to make the trip. Relatives have missed each other's weddings and funerals and have been unable to visit one another even though they are separated by a couple of hours' drive... ...Later in the evening, as buses loaded with the Pakistani visitors wound their way through Indian Kashmir on their way to Srinagar, the provincial capital, people stood along the sidelines, waving and whistling even as darkness and rain began to fall. "Azadi," or freedom, some of them chanted; "Long live Pakistan," shouted others... ..."This is my country," Begum Zamrooda Sharif, a woman in her mid-60's who has a heart condition, said shortly after she made the crossing in a wheelchair from the Pakistani side to the Indian. Born in Jammu, Ms. Sharif had left for Pakistan in 1948, thinking she would return in two or three months. "Now I'm coming back after 57 years," she said. "I feel like laughing and crying at the same time." She said she was here to visit her brother-in-law. Headed in the opposite direction, Ghulam Fatima was on her way to see a daughter in Muzaffarabad after 16 years. "I'm going to meet a piece of my heart," she said, just before the crossing. Her daughter had been married into a family living in Muzaffarabad in 1989. Ms. Fatima and her husband, Mohammed Abdullah Butt, would be seeing their four grandchildren for the first time. "From Home to Home," read a billboard on the Pakistan side of the bridge, and then, further down the road, a line from the Koran: "There is no God but one God." On the Indian side was a billboard containing a verse from Muhammad Iqbal, one of the subcontinent's most celebrated poets. "No religion teaches you to hate one another," it read. The divided families of Kashmir are meant to be the principal beneficiaries of the bus link. They also stand as a metaphor for the bitter relations between their two countries..." nytimes.com