June 20, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 8, 1423

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SRINAGAR, June 19: The All Party Hurriyat Conference on Wednesday asked the Indian government to allow its leaders to visit Azad Kashmir to negotiate a ceasefire.

Abdul Gani Bhat, the APHC chairman, said members of the alliance wanted to travel to Azad Kashmir to meet Mujahideen leaders.

“We will negotiate peace with them and a peaceful resolution to the dispute of Jammu and Kashmir,” Bhat told reporters in Srinagar. He called on India to accept a withdrawal of its forces to its barracks.

“If the government of India agrees in principle (to withdraw troops), then we (Hurriyat leaders) can move to Pakistan and talk to the Mujahideen leadership,” Bhat said.

“If Mujahideen leaders also accept in principle (the ceasefire) then the talks on the troop withdrawal and the ceasefire can start,” he said.

During the truce last year Hurriyat leaders also asked to travel to Azad Kashmir, a request India denied. Bhat said the Hurriyat had wanted to convert Vajpayee’s ceasefire “into a meaningful, purposeful and substantive political process”.

“But the visit for one reason or the other did not happen,” he said.

The Hurriyat considers itself the representative voice of Kashmiris and wants tripartite talks between its leaders, India and Pakistan.

The alliance has called for a boycott of elections planned in the held state by mid-October. Instead, it has proposed forming its own “election commission” that would organize polls to choose representatives from both Azad Kashmir and the Indian-held territory.

But Bhat acknowledged the proposed commission, which would be headed jointly by an Indian and a Pakistani, has been indefinitely set back by India’s opposition to it..—AFP