leaders of three factions of separatist Hurriyat Conference have been invited by Pakistan High Commissioner in Delhi Abdul Basit ahead of proposed talks between Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan in Islamabad on August 25.
The faction led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq that engaged in talks with the Governments of India and Pakistan in the past, confirmed that Mirwaiz has been invited to meet the Pakistan High Commissioner. On the other hand, the hardline faction of Hurriyat led by Syed Ali Geelani decided in a meeting authorised Geelani to meet the Pakistan High Commissioner to convey the stand of Hurriyat about the said dialogue.
The third faction of Hurriyat led by Shabir Shah has also been invited but pro-independence JKlF chief has been left out so far. Malik is out of dialogue ambit since the Government of India protested against his meeting with Jamat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Sayeed in February 2013.
Meeting between the Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi and separatist leaders in Kashmir is a routine affair, but it catches media attention when dignitaries from Pakistan officially visit India. Hardliners in New Delhi oppose separatists’ meetings with Pakistani dignitaries.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq claimed that he advised Pakistan to avoid meeting between Nawaz Sharif and separatist leaders in May this year when the former arrived to take part in the oath-taking ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said that he wanted to contribute to the bonhomie initiated by the new Government of India.
The separatists have not specified as to when they would fly off to Delhi for the ‘consultations’. “We are not against the dialogue process but we believe that until and unless Kashmir is not addressed as the core issue and this issue is not solved according to the wishes and aspirations of its people, this dialogue will also fail to succeed like in the past,” a spokesman of Geelani quoted him as saying in
“We want to convey to the Government of Pakistan that the people of Kashmir will not accept anything less than complete freedom for the Kashmir. The people have outrightly rejected the four-point formula and in future also they will not accept any such out-of- box formula,” he said.