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| 19 November 2004 | Friday | 06 Shawwal 1425 |
Aziz's visit to bring together Kashmiri leaders
NEW DELHI, Nov 18: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, due in New Delhi on Tuesday on a two-day visit, is expected to help bring the fractious All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) to one table as never before, APHC sources said on Thursday.
They told Dawn that diverse leaders, including nearly everyone from the former executive council of the main resistance group that has been fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir since 1991, would attend an exclusive lunch with Mr Aziz on Wednesday.
Among those who are expected to be there are Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq who constitute the two poles of the APHC, the former rejecting all talks with India as useless, the latter keen on a tripartite dialogue that willy-nilly seeks to involve India and Pakistan as the other main parties to the dispute.
Sandwiched between them would be Yasin Malik, whose Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front had set off the prairie fires in Kashmir in 1971 and which he rekindled in 1989. The JKLF ideally wants independence from both India and Pakistan, but is considered closer to Mr Geelani than to the Mirwaiz at present. Shabbir Shah, Maulvi Abbas Ansari, and Prof Abdul Ghani Bhatt would be present at the table.
In a curious way, the meeting with Mr Aziz would be a partial fulfilment of the demand by the APHC, whose interim chairman Maulvi Umar Farooq has demanded that India should allow them to visit Pakistan before holding any further talks with New Delhi. The suggestion has angered Indian officials.
On Thursday, the Mirwaiz appeared to have rowed back on the demand, saying that the proposed Pakistan visit was not a pre-condition for meeting Indian officials.
"This is not a pre-condition but talking to the Pakistan side and to the people with arms is a requirement for a peaceful solution to the Kashmir dispute," he told Dawn from Srinagar.
About Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement on Wednesday that Kashmir was an integral part of India, the Mirwaiz told reporters after a meeting of its executive committee that the APHC considered Kashmir as a disputed issue.
"The issue has three parties and could be resolved when the three parties sit together and find a solution to the issue which is acceptable to all of them," he said. He said if the Indian government was not ready for tripartite talks, let them adopt a triangular approach.
He said India and Pakistan should continue talking to each other, but the APHC leadership should be allowed to have separate dialogue with India and Pakistan.
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