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NEW DELHI, Sept 9: It all seemed to be happening on the Kashmir front on Monday as Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee left for New York.
On a day of quick developments, two senior members of the India’s officially encouraged Kashmir Committee that has been holding peace talks with All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) left for New York, apparently with Vajpayee’s entourage.
Simultaneously, a meeting is now being sought between APHC leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and chairman of the Pakistan-based National Kashmir Committee and former President of Azad Kashmir, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, also in New York.
Well-placed APHC sources told Dawn that the Pakistan government had been approached to facilitate Sardar Qayyum’s departure for New York, possibly with one more member of the National Kashmir Committee.
In the backdrop of a “successful” meeting with the Kashmir Committee led by Ram Jethmalani on Sunday, APHC chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat, held talks on Monday with Pakistan’s acting High Commissioner Jalil Abbas Jilani.
Bhat, speaking of his meeting with Jilani, said: “The meeting with Jethmalani’s Kashmir Committee has been successful and we will seek assistance from the Pakistan government in formalizing a meeting between the two committees.”
Asked whether he was hopeful that efforts of the committee would help in finding a solution to the Kashmir issue, Bhat said: “Undoubtedly the task is difficult and we have miles to go, but one thing is there that we have made an auspicious beginning.”
He lauded the efforts of the Jethmalani Committee but expressed the fear that “hawks within the government will try hard to sabotage the process of finding a peaceful resolution to the problem.”
Asked to comment about reports that India and Pakistan might agree to accept the Line of Control as their permanent border, Vajpayee told reporters at the Delhi airport: “I have also heard about it.”
Press Trust of India interpreted it as a rejection of the proposal.
In a related development, Mirwaiz met senior US and German diplomats separately to brief them about the new fillip to the Kashmir initiative.
“The Americans are on board in this effort. They are pushing for our parleys to succeed,” one APHC source said.
Mirwaiz is expected to participate in the OIC foreign ministers’ contact group on Kashmir and later address their meeting on 17th.
He is also expected to brief them about the progress made with the Jethmalani committee.
VAJPAYEE: Talking to reporters before departure, Vajpayee apparently denied that there was any proposal to allow Jethmalani Committee to visit Pakistan to hold talks with Hurriyat leaders there. “There is no such proposal before us,” he said.
He said in his talks with US President George Bush and other world leaders on the fringes of the UN General Assembly, he would reaffirm India’s determination to firmly counter terrorism across the globe.
Asked whether Washington was really keen on New Delhi’s request to jointly counter cross-border infiltration alleged to be backed by Pakistan, he said: “They (US) are saying that they are fulfilling their promise and would continue to do so”.
Meanwhile Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) on Monday charged the United States with changing its stand on independence for Kashmiris to suit “its own needs” and asserted that independence was the best option for resolving the issue.
Claiming that the United States had been earlier supportive of an independent Kashmir, the acting chairman of the JKLF, Javed Mir, alleged that “the US Congressional research paper, which has stated that an independent Kashmir could turn into a haven for extremists, was far from truth.”
