Islamabad, April 23 (Reuters): The commander of Kashmir’s largest militant group today said Pakistan had caused “irreparable damage” to the Kashmiri fighters’ cause by pursuing peace without winning more concessions from India.

Sayed Salahuddin, the leader of Hizb-ul Mujahideen and chairman of the United Jihad Council grouping a dozen Kashmiri militant organisations, staged a protest last month over Pakistan’s strategy in the peace process begun in early 2004.

“One-sided pragmatism and confidence-building measures, which are not reciprocated by the Indian side, have caused irreparable damage to the ongoing freedom struggle in the (Kashmir) Valley,” said Salahuddin in an e-mail response to Reuters.

The burly, bearded veteran of the 17-year-old insurgency in Indian Kashmir said Kashmiri fighters were feeling abandoned.

“It has created an impression that Pakistan had now become exhausted in extending support to the Kashmir cause,” he said, calling for “substantial support” for the movement to continue.

US President George W. Bush, according to diplomats, is believed to have urged President Pervez Musharraf to do more to halt cross-border militancy in both Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir during a visit to Islamabad in early March.

Days after Bush’s visit, Salahuddin’s aides told Reuters that Pakistan had told the Hizb’s leadership to stop cross-border infiltration, which usually picks up with the onset of spring.

According to diplomats in Islamabad, the Hizb was also told that funding, something Pakistan denies extending, was being cut back.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is clearly more satisfied with Pakistan’s efforts and there is a froth of expectation that the two sides could be close to an agreement to de-militarise the Siachen glacier, a high-altitude battlefield they have fought over since the mid-1980s.

During a speech on March 24 in Amritsar, Singh called for a “treaty of peace, security and friendship”, and praised Musharraf.

The Indian home ministry, according to reports, reckons security forces killed over 900 militants in 2005. Military officials in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, estimated that half of them were from the Hizb and more had been killed in the first few months of 2006.