Saturday, February 25 2006 15:13 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The Handwara killings echoed at the round-table conference on Kashmir being chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with National Conference President Omar Abdullah demanding an impartial inquiry into the incident and punishment to the guilty.

Casting doubts over the enquiry being conducted by the Army, Omar said "while we hold talks about finding a permanent peace, incidents like Handwara make people loose faith in the system.

"The enquiry set up by the army are non-transparent and there has been no result of any magisterial enquiry constituted by the state government since last four years," he said demanding 'a time-bound judicial enquiry.'

The Prime Minister, in his opening remarks earlier, had said, "There have been unfortunate incidents in the last few days in which innocent civilians have been casualities. This was and is not the intention of the Armed Forces. I was grieved by the incident and at the loss of innocent lives. "

"I must point out that the armed forces have been trying their best to improve the situation and there has been an overall improvement in the ground situation. However, I have asked the army to take remedial measures so that such incidents do not recur in future," he said.

During his presentation, Omar said that Kashmir issue could be only solved politically and the autonomy resolution passed by the state assembly was the only 'practical and pragmatic' solution.

Omar presented a copy of the autonomy resolution to the Prime Minister as well.