A leading Kashmiri separatist will visit the North next month to study the peace process and see if lessons can be drawn to help resolve the Kashmir dispute.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat (freedom) Conference - an alliance of nearly two dozen separatist groups - said he would visit from December 11th .
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq
"We have been saying that other disputes around the world can give us an insight," Mr Farooq said in Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital.
"I think Kashmir and Northern Ireland do have similarities - the fact that it's the will of the people to be their own masters and not under the hegemony of one party or the other.
"If you look at Ireland, it has moved from confrontation to co-operation. That is what we have to do," he added.
A separatist revolt against Indian rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir has raged since 1989. Muslim militants want independence for the region from Hindu-majority India or merger with Pakistan.
Officials say more than 45,000 people have died, but separatists say the toll is twice as high.
The six-decade-old dispute is rooted in the region's division between arch-rivals India and Pakistan. The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir and came close to a fourth in 2002.
Since 2004, they have been in revived peace talks aimed at resolving the dispute but the dialogue has made little progress.
The Hurriyat, which claims to represent the people of the strife-torn region, has also held talks with the Indian government with little apparent result.