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ISLAMABAD, June 6: The foreign ministry on Monday expressed the hope that talks between leaders from the valley in the Indian-held Kashmir and political leaders of Azad Kashmir as well as the Pakistani leadership would culminate in Kashmiris’ involvement in the Indo-Pakistan dialogue on the Kashmir issue.
The foreign office spokesman was answering a question at his weekly press briefing whether the Hurriyat leaders’ talks in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan would lead to their joining the Indo-Pakistan dialogue.
The visiting leaders have already met Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and are likely to call on President General Pervez Musharraf.
To Pakistan, spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said, Kashmir was one of the cardinal issues as far its relations with India were concerned. Pakistan as a sovereign and independent country had a principled position on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir which was well-known, he added.
He said “there is absolutely no roadmap” on the Kashmir dispute and added that Pakistan was well aware of the fact that without the involvement of the Kashmiris in the process a lasting solution of the dispute was not possible.
He said it was well known that for a lasting solution the aspirations of the Kashmiri people would have to be ascertained and it was also apparent that the Hurriyat leaders were themselves aware of the Kashmiris’ sentiments with regard to the kind of solution they wished to have.
Pakistan, he stressed, was also fully aware of the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and was confident that there would be no deviation from it. Mr Jilani was seeking to allay apprehensions of a section of the Kashmiri leadership which did not accompany Mirwaiz Maulvi Umer Farooq and other leaders on their present journey.
He said the issue of the Kashmiris’ involvement in dialogue had been taken up with the Indian government on various occasions and in interaction held by the president and the prime minister of Pakistan at the highest level.
In reply to a question, he said three rounds of talks that the prime minister had held with the visiting Kashmiri delegation, including JKLF chairman Yasin Malik, were aimed at exchanging views on various ‘ideas’ in order to assess the possibility of a consensus among different leaders and groups for the solution of the Kashmir issue. More such meetings were in the offing and eventually a meeting between the Kashmiri leaders and the president, he added.
The spokesman said the visiting Hurriyat leaders had pleaded for the inclusion in the delegation of the ‘genuine’ Kashmiri representatives who did not take the present bus route since they believed that it might give legitimacy to the Line of Control to be a permanent border between the separated parts of the J&K.
He agreed to a suggestion that the international community could play a positive role in search for a settlement of the Kashmir issue through the Indo-Pakistan dialogue and for the involvement of the Kashmiri leaders in the process.
Answering a question on a statement by Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri about the likely decision of President Pervez Musharraf to give up his uniform and take part in the elections in 2007 as a civilian, he said: “The issue of uniform was already settled.”
LIBBI HANDED OVER TO US: Pakistan has handed over alleged top Al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al-Libbi to Washington after he gave information on terror cells in other countries, officials and security sources said on Monday, AFP adds from Islamabad.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani confirmed a reported statement by Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf in a United Arab Emirates newspaper on Monday that the terror network’s alleged number three had been deported.
“The president made a statement to this effect. The president’s statement was self-explanatory,” Mr Jilani told a weekly news conference in Islamabad. He gave no further details.
Al-Libbi, who was arrested last month, is the alleged mastermind of two attempts on Musharraf’s life in December 2003, and a bid to assassinate Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz before he assumed office last year.
“Yes, we turned al-Libbi over to the United States recently. We don’t want people like him in our country,” Gen Musharraf was quoted as saying in the Abu Dhabi daily Al-Ittihad.
Security officials said that al-Libbi was flown out of Pakistan and given to US custody last Wednesday, the day after an interview with Musharraf was broadcast in which he said Pakistan would do so.
They said al-Libbi was Al Qaeda’s external operations chief, based in Pakistan, and had provided details on other suspects in the Middle East which led to a number of arrests.
“He provided several leads to the interrogators here that led to the disclosure of some sleeper cells in some Arab countries,” one of the security officials said.
“He was of more interest because of the external links so they handed him over.”
