Delhi sets conditions for talks with Kashmir rebels

"We're always ready for dialogue. But the dialogue will be under the Indian constitution," Indian junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal told reporters in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir where a deadly insurgency against New Delhi's rule has raged since 1989.

The statement by the minister of the Congress government elected in May, marked a major shift from the previous ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's support for unconditional dialogue.

Moderate separatists who held two rounds of talks earlier this year with former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani, the first since the revolt began, said there could be no more talks until New Delhi changel its stand.

"Conditional talks are unacceptable and unrealistic," said the moderate wing of the main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference.

"Talks sho}ld be meaningful, result-oriented and unconditional," Maulana Abbas Ansari, a leading moderate, told AFP.

Ansari and other moderate separatists took part in the talks against a backdrop of easing tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan which have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Political analysts said moderate separatists had no choice but to reject conditional talks as it would mean New Delhi could offer Kashmiris nothing new.

Hardliners who split with the moderates over the talks, branding the dialogue a sellout, would have only stepped up their criticism, they said.

"If they accepted such talks, critics would have called them traitors," said analyst Tahir Mohiudin, editor of the Srinagar-based widely read Urdu weekly "Chattan."

"There was no need for such a statement (by the national government). It was the last nail in the coffin," he said.

The hardliners, supported by armed rebels who are seeking Kashmir's merger with Pakistan, oppose the talks to bring peace to the region where the revolt has left at least 40,000 dead by India's tally and at least 80,000 dead by the separatists' count.

The leftist-backed Congress government had said after the election it would resume talks but had set no date.