When asked if New Delhi was planning to implement a fresh truce in the insurgency-wracked region, Fernandes said: "No, there are no such plans."

India declared a ceasefire in November 2000 which was called off nine months later as militants continued their operations.

A recent thaw in relations between arch-rivals India and Pakistan had raised hopes of another truce in the state, where more than 38,000 people have died in an anti-Indian Muslim insurgency since 1989. Separatists and Pakistan put the toll twice as high.

The defence minister welcomed the warming relations with Pakistan which began after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee offered a "hand of friendship" on April 18.

"If there is friendship between the two countries it is good," he said, but added the resumption of talks between the two nuclear-armed rivals will take time.

"So far the talk of dialogue has not come," he told a news conference in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir.

"First both (India and Pakistan) will have to build confidence, the situation has to normalise and only that will create a conducive environment to promote talks," he said.

Fernandes welcomed Islamabad's decision to release 20 Indian prisoners.

"We had been telling them (the Pakistanis) that our people are there in the jails, they had been denying that even at the highest level," he said.

"But now they have said they would be sending back 20 prisoners, we welcome it and it is a big confidence building measure," he said.

He also called for those opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir to shun separatism.

"My message to them is to come and join the national mainstream and work towards the development of the state."

WAR.WIRE