Mirwaiz insists on visit to Pakistan before talks with Indian PM
By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Nov 16: Kashmiri's spiritual leader Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq said on Tuesday that the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) would not hold talks with Indian officials
or even with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh unless APHC's leaders were allowed to visit Pakistan for political talks.
While there is no known Indian offer for a meeting between Hurriyat representatives and Dr Singh when he visits Srinagar on Wednesday, Maulvi Umar's remarks did betray a hardening of his stand on talks with Indian officials. The earlier stance was that the APHC, which Maulvi Umar leads, would consider any offer for a meeting with the Indian prime minister, "even though the APHC would prefer to visit Pakistan first".
On Tuesday, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was more strident on the issue. "There is no point in seeking a meeting with the Indian prime minister without talking to Pakistan," he told Dawn.
"We have held two rounds of talks with the previous National Democratic Alliance government and would like to visit Pakistan for holding talks with the leadership on the other side before the third round of talks with New Delhi," he said. An important agenda for the APHC was to talk to "men bearing arms" in Pakistan to seek a peaceful solution to the dispute, he added.
Maulvi Farooq's stand was clearly prompted by the stark reality that senior Indian officials, who manage the prime minister's Kashmir policy, have unequivocally turned down the proposal to allow Kashmiri representatives to visit Pakistan.
India's National Security Adviser Jyotindra Nath Dixit was quite explicit in his opposition to the APHC visit. In an interview to The Tehelka weekly newspaper on Sunday, Mr Dixit argued that the Hurriyat leaders had frequent meetings with officials of the Pakistan high commission in Delhi and yet they refused to meet with Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil.
He also referred to the recent meeting between Maulvi Umar and President Gen Pervez Musharraf in Amsterdam in September.
"They are in touch with the Pakistan establishment," Mr Dixit said. "Umar Farooq met Musharraf in Amsterdam and the Pakistan high commissioner is a permanent host to them. He always has time for them. We can't have this high-horse spirit- that you can speak to the high commissioner of Pakistan, but not the home minister of India."
Mr Dixit said that a formal delegation of the APHC visiting Pakistan was "Pakistan's tactic of having tripartite talks in which they only want those hardliner representatives who talk of separation and secession. There has to be some structure to such a dialogue. Let Pakistan talk to their own Kashmiris and we'll do the same. Why should we respond to Pakistan's insistence that talks should be held in their territory and at their insistence?"
The APHC's move to visit Pakistan as a pre-condition for talks with Indian officials was dismissed by A.S. Dulat, key government adviser on Kashmir and former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
Asked if India would allow the Mirwaiz to visit Pakistan, he said: "That is rubbish! He may not have said it as a condition to restart talks. No government can agree to it. The Hurriyat has said many times before that the talks are unconditional. Let it be unconditional."
To Maulvi Umar it didn't matter much. He said the APHC was going to apply for passports on Wednesday.
