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JAMMU, Oct 4: Political groups in the occupied Kashmir, who met Pakistani journalists on Monday, appeared sad on the present state of affairs in the disputed state, but most of them pinned hopes on the newly-resumed peace process between Islamabad and New Delhi.
Leaders and spokesmen for some of them expressed varying points of view as they talked to the group of 16 journalists from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir who arrived overnight in this city of temples on a path breaking six-day trip, which will also take them to the region's main city of Srinagar on Tuesday. They are on a peace-seeking mission.
But there was little meeting point on any possible solution to the Kashmir problem. Jammu, the winter capital of the occupied Kashmir, has a predominantly Hindu population of about 1.2 million that by and large wants union with India.
But the regional chapters of various political parties still seek a final settlement of the Kashmir problem ranging from the acceptance of the present military Line of Control (LoC) as a permanent border to a joint control of the Himalayan region by both India and Pakistan and a UN-mandated plebiscite to choose between the two countries.
It is the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley where the main political parties and militant groups opposing India's rule and seeking accession to Pakistan or total independence are based.
While political groups ranging from the nationally ruling Congress Party of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to state-ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee talked about the political aspects of the Kashmir problem, an apparently desperate humanitarian problem was brought out by Kashmiri Pandits forced out of the Valley by the now 15-year-old militant revolt there.
The regional leadership of the National Conference, the state's oldest party formed by the late Kashmiri leader Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and now led by his grandson Omar Abdullah, said it would stick to its policy to remain within the Indian union, but would seek a restoration of the quantum of autonomy given to the state originally under the Indian constitution's article 370 in 1952.
But any solution to the problem with Pakistan must give "primacy to democratic aspirations" of the Kashmiri people, party spokesman Mohammad Shafi said as he and his colleagues sat cross-legged on a carpeted floor of their office under the shadow of a life-size portrait of Sheikh Abdullah when they held a breakfast meeting with Pakistani journalists.
State BJP president Nirmal Singh said at another meeting that his party would not spoil the process initiated by Mr Vajpayee before losing the May elections and now taken over by the Congress-led government of Mr Manmohan Singh.
Panthers Party chief Bhim Singh, an ally of chief minister Mufti Sayeed, said he thought "the people of Jammu and Kashmir stand for India", but Kashmiri politicians on both sides of the divide should be allowed to find a solution to the problem, for which he planned to convene a meeting of Kashmiri leaders on Nov 15-16.
A group called the International Democratic Party proposed a joint control of Kashmir by both India and Pakistan as one possible solution without hurting the ego of both countries.
A local leader of the Congress party, Mohammad Ayub Khan, said 'objective realities' should be taken into consideration to find a solution through dialogue rather than bullets.
Another Congress leader, Ghulam Mohammad Poonchi, who had been a classmate of Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat before partition, said road links between the two parts of Kashmir should be restored not only through the presently-planned route of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad, but also between Jammu and Sialkot and the two parts of his divided home district of Poonch.
ANGRY PANDITS: The angry Pandits, while speaking to the journalists at shanty camp in a western Jammu suburb, hurled blames all around- at militants for driving them from a comparatively comfortable life in the Kashmir Valley, at Pakistan for allegedly arming the militants and at the Indian and state governments for not doing enough for their security and resettlement.
With little other remedy in sight- not even help from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, their representatives said they would like a separate 'Panun Kashmir' (my Kashmir) homeland to be carved out for them within the state in areas north and east of the River Jhelum that would be part of India.
"This was not a fight for independence, but Muslims versus non-Muslim communities," said one of the Pandit activists as several of them accused the militants of 'atrocities' and 'ethnic-cleansing'.
"If it had been for Azadi (freedom), I would have joined it," said another. The militant groups deny these charges and some of them as well as the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the umbrella organization of anti-India groups, want the Pandits to return to their homes.
But the activists said they could not trust such assurances and felt an estimated 300,000 displaced Pandits would remain insecure in the valley. Ajat Shatru Singh, a grandson of Kashmir's last princely ruler Hari Singh, was one of political and other groups of all shades, including traders, academicians and students, who welcomed the Pakistani journalists who arrived in Jammu on Sunday night to begin a peace-seeking move of their own style, sponsored by the South Asian Free Media Association (Safma).
"I expect fountains of love and understanding (from the peace process," said Mr Singh, who was a minister in the previous state government of Farooq Abdullah, at a dinner hosted by Jammu University vice-chancellor Amitab Mattu.
