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| Kashmir leaders to bash India in Pugwash | | | Majid Ahmad
Srinagar, Aug 29: After suspending so-called Conference on Kashmir last month, Pugwash is all set to hold a conference in Islamabad Pakistan where separatists and their sympathisers from Jammu and Kashmir have been invited to bash India.
Sources told Early Times that international NGO Pugwash has announced new dates for holding the conference after postponing it earlier. The conference would be held from September 15 to 17 at Islamabad and invitations have already been sent to different separatist leaders and some Kashmir based mainstream political leaders.
The conference was earlier scheduled to be held from August 17 to August 21 but was postponed due to some unknown reasons. Pugwash Secretary General Paolo Cotta Ramusino had visited Kashmir in May this year to extend invitation to the mainstream and separatist leaders to take part in the conference. "Ramusino met several separatist and mainstream leaders and tried to motivate them to attend the conference," sources said.Prominent mainstream leaders who have been invited to the 'anti-India' conference include Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti, CPI (M) state secretary Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami and prominent businessman of Kashmir, Zahoor Ahmad Wattali.
Separatist leaders including chairmen of both factions of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Geelani and pro-independence JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik have also been sent invitations to participate in the conference.
However, sources said Geelani, Mirwaiz and Malik can't participate in the conference as their passports have been held back by the government.
In 2006, leaders from both separatist and mainstream camps, including then National Conference president and incumbent chief minister, Omar Abdullah, had participated in the conference held in Islamabad.
A senior political analyst while commenting on the agenda of the conference said, "Western NGOs should understand that Kashmir issue is not going to be resolved by their sympathetic attitude towards militants but by condemning them. They (separatists) should straightaway reject violence first and then speak and this is what people of J&K want," he claimed.A political science student Bashir Ahmad questioned that if separatists decided to stay away from Roundtable Conference organised by the Prime Minister Dr Manmonhan Singh in Srinagar on 24-25 May 2006, how they can claim that they want to resolve Kashmir issue through a dialogue peace process now.
"The Roundtable Conference was hailed as a significant step forward with Prime Minister outlining a comprehensive framework for addressing Kashmiri grievances. By boycotting the roundtable, the separatists lost opportunity to involve themselves in the broad-based dialogue process," he said. The only aim of Pugwash like conferences, he added, is to spit venom against India and participation of Kashmir based mainstream parties in it is strange. "If separatists can't share the table with mainstream leaders in Kashmir, how can they do the same outside the country," he asked. |
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