July 25, 2002	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 14,1423

NEW DELHI, July 24: Maulvi Omar Farooq, former head of Kashmir’s All Parties Hurriyat Conference, urged India on Wednesday to start talks with the group for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir tangle but said there should be no pre-conditions from either side to begin the process.

Indian officials say they expect groups and individuals opposed to New Delhi’s rule in the Himalayan region to participate in regional elections due to be held later this year to the state legislature.

The APHC says it is not opposed to elections per se if they were a means to resolve the dispute about Kashmir’s future.

“We have been making it amply clear that talks were the mode by which the issue could be solved but the parley should be unconditional from both sides,” said Maulvi Farooq in New Delhi.

“Talks will be unconditional provided the centre also stops harping on holding the exercise within the framework of Indian constitution.”

Kashmir was not an administrative problem and the issue needed immediate and serious attention from the centre for its final resolution through a constructive dialogue.

“We have maintained that we will not shy away from any such exercise aimed at resolving the Kashmir dispute but we reject outright an election process which envisages forming a government in the state and later governing it,” Farooq told the Press Trust of India.

He said the APHC had maintained that Kashmir issue had to be finally resolved through dialogue and the “sooner it is, the better.”

The former chairman was reacting to the statement made by Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani that talks with pro-freedom leaders were on to ensure their participation in the forthcoming assembly elections.

Asked about the talks on autonomy issue between the state and central governments, he said: “We are yet to take any decision on the issue.”

Farooq, the youngest of the Hurriyat leaders was married recently to the daughter of a US-based Kashmiri businessman.