Troops on alert for Indian PM's Kashmir conclave

INDIA: Hundreds of troops sealed off the summer capital of Indian Kashmir on Wednesday as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived for a peace meeting which Islamist militants have threatened to disrupt.

Troops took positions along roads blocked by barbed wires as Srinagar almost shut down a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up in the city, wounding over two dozen soldiers.

Singh flew into heavily guarded Srinagar airport and took a helicopter into the city, an army spokesman said. On the streets, troops frisked pedestrians and stopped and screened buses.

The two-day "roundtable", the second such effort this year, has been called by the government to widen the dialogue process in the state, where a separatist revolt against Indian rule by Muslim militants since 1989 has killed more than 45,000 people.

The region's main separatists are boycotting the meeting.

Singh was due to meet state government officials and top military and paramilitary commanders before the meeting, to be attended by the ruling Congress party and its regional ally, the Peoples Democratic Party, opposition groups and some independent lawmakers.

"There have been 130 conferences and dialogues on Kashmir since 1948," said Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a veteran hardliner.

"Nothing has emerged and nothing would come out of this too."

But a spokesman for Singh told Reuters the roundtable would be "very substantial", with or without the region's main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, and despite the violence. Tuesday's suicide blast wounded at least 25 Border Security Force troops, four critically.

A police spokesman said the bomber was in a car packed with explosives. The explosion, which threw up a huge mushroom cloud, was the latest in a series of attacks in Srinagar ahead of the conclave.

The high-profile conference suffered a setback this week after the Hurriyat announced it would not attend the meeting, dubbing the participants a "crowd of hypocrites".

In another blow, the hardline faction of the alliance and militant groups called for a general strike on the days of the meeting.

Srinagar,Wednesday Reuters