Queen Elizabeth's tour of India slid deeper into controversy yesterday with sources close to the Indian government claiming that the British Labour Party had a "hidden agenda" to create an independent Kashmir.
Even as the British entourage scrambled to salvage the queen's week-long trip, which has turned into a public relations fiasco, anonymous officials said Labour's Kashmir position dated back to 1947.
The Indian sources said the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, who visited India last year as a member of the shadow Labour cabinet, had told Indian authorities the Kashmir issue was an "article of faith" with the Labour Party.
This "hidden agenda" was ultimately to obtain an independent state of Jammu and Kashmir. "Cook genuinely believes that there is an unfinished business of partition," the sources said. The allegations were made just over a week before the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and his Indian counterpart, Mr Inder Kumar Gujral, are scheduled to meet on the fringes of the Commonwealth summit in Edinburgh.
The queen's trip to Pakistan and India, to mark the 50th anniversaries of their independence from Britain, began last week. Although her visit to the Amritsar site of a massacre instigated by a British officer in 1919 went generally well, the Duke of Edinburgh ruffled feathers by querying a plaque which said the death toll of the incident was 2,000.
In Islamabad, the queen called on the two nations to settle their "historic differences" over the disputed Kashmir region.
Mr Cook, who was accompanying the queen, was quoted in the Pakistani press as offering British mediation but he denied making such an offer.
Mr Inder Kumar Gujral was widely reported to have responded by calling Britain a meddling "third-rate power", a remark the Foreign Ministry later denied.
Mr Cook, who has now returned to London, denied yesterday that there had been any "pestering" on the delicate subject of Kashmir.
"We're not pestering India over Kashmir. As a matter of fact, throughout the entire trip, neither in Islamabad nor in Delhi, did I make any public statement on the issue of Kashmir."
He said the issue of a speech cancelled in Madras had been blown out of proportion. "Nobody in the royal party was concerned about this and it was not a big issue. I really do not think that this kind of storm in a teacup should overshadow the enormously warm welcome of the people of India."
Referring to a what he saw as anti-British reporting of the tour in the Indian media, the British High Commissioner, Mr David Gore-Booth, said: "The Indian press is almost as licentious as our own."
British officials are irritated that the various rows which dogged the trip have overshadowed trade objectives. On Wednesday, the queen opened a major trade exhibition in New Delhi that London hoped would give a major boost to British trade in India, but the event was almost largely ignored.
The queen was said to be enjoying her third visit to India since 1961. Yesterday, she saw Indian director, Kamal Haasan, at work on his latest film, an epic from the days of British colonial pioneer, Robert Clive.