DIVIDED INDIAN - PAKISTANI FAMILIES GATHER

January 21, 2004 – (AP) Hajra Bibi held up her 1-year-old son on the Pakistani side of the Neelum River on Wednesday so her mother, across the rushing water on the Indian side, could see him for the first time.

Three men restrained Bibi's mother from trying to jump into the dangerous, icy water to swim across to her daughter and grandson.

Scores of other emotional scenes played out along the river Wednesday as thousands of people kept apart for nearly a generation in the dispute over Kashmir waved or tossed messages across the water.

It was the largest of several other similar riverbank reunions that have occurred since a cease-fire was declared two months ago.

Weeping men, women and children gathered on the rocky shore beside the river that divides this corner of Kashmir between the Indian and Pakistani armies, the closest they have been allowed to get to each other in 14 years.

They weren't able to embrace each other, but they threw letters weighted with stones across to family members and friends, along with gifts of coconuts, cigarettes, tea, cooking oil and shoes.

``My mother is standing over there on the other side and I haven't seen her in 14 years,'' the 26-year-old Bibi said between sobs.

About 1,500 people stood in the cold rain on the Indian side, with a handful of soldiers trying to hold back those in front from falling in the water. Some 600 people were on the Pakistani side.

At least one woman on the Indian side jumped into the river and tried to cross, only to be swept off her feet. Four men rescued her.

The Himalayan territory has been divided for 56 years, since India and Pakistan became independent from Britain. The split became deadly when nationalists on the Indian-ruled side, supported by Islamic militants, launched an insurgency in 1989.

Since then, some 65,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed. Fire between the Indian and Pakistani armies across the Line of Control was a daily danger, and the front-line that cuts through the Neelum River valley is littered with buildings collapsed by artillery shells and pocked by machine gun fire.

India and Pakistan nearly went to war two years ago after Islamic insurgents from the Kashmir conflict attacked India's Parliament in New Delhi. But both countries made efforts to ease tensions in April, and a cease-fire on the Line of Control took effect Nov. 26. The climate further improved this month by the launch of a peace dialogue.

Kashmiri separatists are to meet Thursday with representatives of the Indian government led by Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani -- the first talks with anyone of that level in the Indian government.

In the Neelum River valley, the biggest benefit has been that an Indian machine gun post no longer shoots at vehicles and people moving along the river-hugging road on the Pakistani side, lifting a virtual siege and enabling refugees from camps elsewhere in Kashmir to come here, one of the few places where people from both sides could see each other.

The village -- called Chiliana on the Pakistani side, and Tithwal on the Indian-controlled side -- is cut in two by the river. Residents normally can't come closer than 100 yards to each other.

In recent days, residents on either side using cell phones called family members to come to the village and meet on the riverbanks.

Authorities made no move to stop the meetings. Entire families walked or rode on overcrowded trucks into the area Wednesday.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kashmir-Reunions.html