A Kashmiri boy at Prime Minister’s election rally on Sunday. (Reuters)

Khundroo (south Kashmir) Dec. 14: Manmohan Singh today said normal relations with Pakistan weren’t possible unless it stopped allowing its territory for terror attacks on India.

“Our desire to normalise relations with Pakistan is not possible until our neighbouring country stops allowing its territory to be used for terrorist activities against us. Nobody should treat our good intentions as weakness,” the Prime Minister told an election rally here.

His tough message to Pakistan came over a week after Congress chief Sonia Gandhi addressed a rally in the Valley and warned the neighbour on the attacks from its soil.

Singh is the latest top leader to visit the Valley, buoyed by the impressive turnout in the first few phases of the ongoing Assembly elections, including yesterday’s voting. The sixth round is scheduled for December 17, when 16 constituencies spread over Kulgam, Anantnag, Ramban, Kishtwar and Doda will vote.

Like Sonia before, the Prime Minister spoke of the series of confidence-building measures taken by the two countries in the past few years to normalise relations. In spite of the gestures, the Prime Minister said, some people in Pakistan were always on the look-out to carry out “bloody attacks”. He made specific mention of Mumbai and said: “We shall continue to fight terrorism with full might.”

Singh used the occasion to urge militants “to shun the path of bloodshed and join the mainstream”. “Bloodshed will not solve any problem and it will only bring destruction. The only way to solve your problems is through talks in a democratic set-up,” the Prime Minister said.

Authorities had clamped an undeclared curfew in many parts of the Valley to prevent pro-independence processions. Separatist leaders, who are boycotting the polls, had called a strike today to protest the Prime Minister’s visit.

Singh said his government had taken several steps to “heal wounds”. “We opened the road to PoK so you can go and meet relatives. Similarly, your relatives can travel from PoK to meet their near ones (on this side). We want to heal the wounds of the people of the state. We can’t change borders but we can make them irrelevant.”

The venue of today’s rally, Khundroo in the Devsar constituency, seemed carefully chosen. The Congress expects to wrest the seat from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Khundroo is also where one of India’s largest ammunition depot was up in flames last year in an accidental blaze that killed scores of civilians. The Congress is now banking on the rehabilitation it carried out after the blaze and on other projects under Ghulam Nabi Azad, its chief minister who resigned after differences with coalition partner PDP.

In the 2002 elections, the Congress had won 20 of the state’s 87 seats, including five in Kashmir. The PDP had bagged 16 and the National Conference 28, the highest.