New Delhi (Reuter)—Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s peace pact to end three years of sectarian turmoil in Punjab has won wide support but analysts say he still faces obstacles in curbing Sikh unrest. 

Gandhi, a former airline pilot with five years in politics and eight months in power, confounded critics Wednesday by defusing an explosive situation that had frustrated his more experienced mother and led to her death last October. 

The 40-year-old leader inherited a strife-torn Punjab when Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards last Oct. 31, five months after she ordered troops to storm the Golden Tem­ple, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine. 

About 1,000 people died in the temple attack and in riots following Gandhi’s murder more than 27,00 Sikhs were killed. 

Gandhi took a soft line in his first speeches, soothing Sikh nerves and pledging to give the Punjab situation top priority. 

Under the 11-point pact, hammered out over two days of talks with Sikh leader Harchand Singh Longowal, the govern­ment referred demands for territorial and political autonomy to official com­missions. 

It pledged to widen the probe into the anti-Sikh riots, and withdrew sweeping security powers given troops in Punjab. 

It also agreed to designate Chandi­garh, the joint capital of Punjab and neighboring Haryana state, as Punjab’s alone. 

Opponents and supporters hailed the signing of the accord. 

Madhu Dandavate, leader of the right­wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, said opposition parties were in total agreement with the settlement. 

Political analysts said Gandhi’s break­through may have pulled faltering Sikh moderates  back from the precipice of 

gruntled militants might launch a last- ditch assault to gain their objective—an independent Sikh state. 

The analysts said Longowal faced a potential revolt within the ranks of his own party, the Akali Dal, which sparked the Punjab crisis in August, 1982, by starting a “dharam yudh” (war of right­eousness) to secure its political and reli­gious demands. 

Two of Longowal’s most powerful col­leagues, former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and Sikh temples management committee chief Gurcharan Singh Tohra, stayed away from the Delhi talks. 

“But it is more than likely that they will fall in line,” prominent Sikh histo­rian and member of parliament Khush­want Singh said. “As for the militants, they don’t talk the same language as the rest of the country. They talk with guns.”  

And the nation came to terms with the shock of her death, Gandhi’s flowers felt she had died in defense of her beliefs — symbolized by the Punjab crisis in which her decision to send in the army may have spelled her own death.