Separatist leaders from the Indian portion of Kashmir urged Pakistan and India to do their utmost to resolve their decades-long dispute over the divided Himalayan region. The nine moderate separatists traveled Thursday to the Pakistani side of Kashmir, on their first trip to the country in decades. The delegation hopes to promote an end to the lingering crisis over Kashmir, The Associated Press reported. "Pakistan and India are nuclear powers. They should make sincere efforts to solve the Kashmir issue for durable peace in the region," Umar Farooq, the leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), told reporters late Thursday in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-controlled portion. The alliance groups religious and political parties. Former APHC chairman, Abdul Ghani Bhat, demanded that Kashmiris be included in all future talks on Kashmir. "Kashmir is ours. We are the real party to the dispute, and no decision will be acceptable without the participation of Kashmiri people in talks between Pakistan and India," Bhat said. Farooq later told Pakistan's private "Geo" Television that the divided region could be merged into a "United States of Kashmir." "It is one of many proposals," he said.
