CHINESE MILITANTS DIE IN KASHMIR: REPORT

NEW DELHI - Indian troops shot dead four Uighur militants from China's north western Xinjiang province in Kashmir last month, the Hindustan Times reported Wednesday.

According to the report, be¬fore they died of their injuries, two Uighurs admitted they were trained by pan-Islamic jihad groups in Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

The militants also admitted they had infiltrated into Indiancontrolled Kashmir from Paki¬stan-controlled Kashmir with a group from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, the newspaper said.

The militants were in Kashmir to observe "Lashkar's ongoing anti-India operations and then to head for Chechnya, the report said.

Information obtained from the militants was passed on to Chinese assistant foreign min¬ister Wang Yi, who visited the Indian capital for the second round of the Sino-Indian secu¬rity dialogue earlier this month, the newspaper reported.

During talks, the Indian delegation called for joint ef¬forts to combat Islamic funda¬mentalism, the news report said.

Xinjiang separatists — mainly ethnic Uighur Muslims — have been involved in fre¬quent and bloody clashes with the Chinese authorities in re¬cent years.

Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language and make up a large part of Xinjiang's popu¬lation, have been linked to deadly bombings as well as ri¬ots, most notably clashes in January 1997 which according to independent sources left as many as 100 dead.

(KASHMIR OBSERVER, 24 February, 2001)