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| Mufti urges Singh not to abandon his Pakistan policy | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Jan 17: Regretting that the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had chosen to lend his voice to the hawks on the current Indo-Pakistan problem, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) today expressed strong disapproval of measures that undermine the peace process.
Addressing the members of the district committee Kathua here today the party patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said these developments had come as a severe setback to the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Mufti said suspension of the implementation of new liberal visa regime and virtual deportation of hockey players from Pakistan sent extremely negative signals to people in the state who were looking up to the Prime Minister for carrying forward the peace process that had impacted lives of the people very positively in the last ten years.
He said the ceasefire between the two armies had brought back normalcy and happiness into the lives of people from Kathua to Kargil who had been condemned to incessant shelling and exchange of fire for decades and fear that forced them into bunkers and safe houses. "Same was true of the people living on the other side of the border and the two governments owed it to this vulnerable population to de escalate the tension and restore normalcy on the LoC" Mufti said. Mufti said it was disheartening for the large peace constituency in the country that the Prime Minister should have indicated the end of "business as usual" with Pakistan in the wake of the unfortunate incidents on the LoC and the shrill debate that followed it in a section of media. He said two successive governments led by Dr Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee had invested heavily in the peace process and it would be unfortunate if Dr Singh for any reason felt obliged to go back on his own painstaking effort by conceding space to extremist views on his Pakistan policy.
Referring to ups and downs in any engagement with Pakistan, Mufti said there was no doubt that complexities of our history would make this no easy task.
The intervention of forces inimical to peace was never too far from the efforts to bridge the gap and it is only the kind of statesmanship displayed by Vajpayee and after him by Dr Singh that could take it forward.
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