SRINAGAR, India Kashmir's Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah has blamed alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden for a continuing bloody separatist drive in the disputed state, an official communique said Sunday.
"Eighty percent of militants operating in the state today are foreign elements ... Osama bin Laden is involved in this," it said, quoting Abdullah, according to a dispatch of AFP.
"The number of the local militants was on the decline as people had seen through the game of destruction the neighboring country was playing here," he said in an oblique reference to Pakistan, which administers part of Kashmir.
Pakistan and India have fought two wars over Kashmir.
Abdullah said the state government was successfully tackling the militant campaign, which has claimed more than 34,000 lives since it erupted in 1989.
"The security grid in the state has been strengthened and more and more militants are now getting killed ... Recruitment in the state police has increased by 25,000 men in four years including 18,000 special police officers to upgrade security in villages." The chief minister also rejected third party mediation in the Kashmir tangle, saying it needed a political solution.
"Twenty years from now, good friendly relations will emerge between India and Pakistan," Abdullah said, adding that the Kashmir issue would be resolved on the basis of the present Line Of Control (LOC), the de facto border demarcating Indian and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
India accuses Pakistan of supporting the insurgency in Kashmir with arms and money.
Islamabad denies the charge but extends open moral and diplomatic support to what it sees as the Kashmiris'just struggle for self-determination.