Former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister and Opposition National Conference working president Omar Abdullah urged New Delhi to start a comprehensive political dialogue with Pakistan and various stakeholders in the embattled State to find out lasting solution to the Kashmir issue. Addressing a party rally in north Kashmir’s Kupwara town he said the dialogue process was unquestionable and crucial in order to achieve sustainable peace.
Omar, according to an NC spokesman asked New Delhi “to change its rigid stance and adopt a nuanced, humane policy of engagement rather than treating a political issue through law and order mechanisms.”
He said the PDP-BJP experiment in J&K had turned out to be monumental political failure that had wreaked havoc with peace and stability in the State and had also brought about a complete collapse of the administrative machinery rendering developmental works defunct.
“There is absolutely no alternative to political engagement. New Delhi needs to realize that it has to talk to various stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir and also resume the dialogue process with Pakistan if it wants to see normalcy and peace in Kashmir. When we met the Prime Minister and the Home Minister during the course of the current unrest, we asked the Central Government to initiate a process of political engagement with various stakeholders in the State and also resume the dialogue process with Pakistan without any further delay,” he said.
“We asked the Central Government to realise that neighbours cannot afford perpetual hostility and peace was the only sustainable option. Reminding the Government of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s efforts and policy viz-a-viz Kashmir, we asked them to adopt a similar policy of reconciliation and resolution rather than pushing the people of the State into a corner of suffocation and hopelessness,” he said at the rally.
“While National Conference remains committed to its struggle for the restoration of Autonomy, we have always maintained that we will welcome any other solution that is acceptable to the people of Jammu and Kashmir as well as New Delhi and Islamabad. We have our own political ideology and agenda and there is absolutely no change in that. The fact that we passed the Autonomy Resolution in the legislative Assembly in 2000 with a two-thirds majority is a testament to our continued struggle for the restoration of Autonomy. This struggle will continue without any change. Our own proposed solution and agenda aside, we will continue demanding that New Delhi initiates an unconditional political engagement with all other stakeholders, including the Hurriyat leadership in a sincere effort to end the turmoil and bloodshed in Kashmir and find a lasting solution to the political issue”, the NC Working President added.
Omar also stated that the hostility, armed conflict and animosity between India and Pakistan would lead us farther away from a possible resolution and would compound the misery and suffering in Kashmir.