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| PDP gets cold shoulder | | |
ET REPORTER
Jammu, July 15: True to its pressure tactics, the Peoples Democratic Party today yet again stirred the demilitarisation issue but just to get could shoulder from the Prime Minister.
A delegation of the Peoples Democratic Party led by its senior leader and Agriculture Minister Abdul Aziz Zargar called on the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Raj Bhawan late this afternoon shortly before he flew in to Delhi. Finance Minister Tariq Hamid Qarra, Housing Minister Qazi Mohammad Afzal and senior party leader Rangil Singh were also part of the delegation.
The delegation urged the Prime Minister to announce reduction in troop strength as they claimed that situation demanded reduction of forces in the interiors. Highly placed sources said that the Prime Minister did not like the PDP's assertion at this occasion.
To the demand of PDP delegation, the Prime Minister asked them to wait for the recommendations of the committees on demilitarisation constituted by him. The Prime Minister is reported to have told the PDP leaders, "since we have already constituted three committees for the purpose and their reports are just round the corner, therefore all of us should wait for that occasion".
On being pressed hard by the PDP Ministers on the issue, the Prime Minister turned categorical. Quoting the Prime Minister, a PDP leader said, "forces can not be withdrawn from the borders while in the interiors it depends upon the ground situation".
Meanwhile, in a separate statement, Welcoming the Prime Minister's statement that Jammu & Kashmir could become a symbol of Indo-Pak cooperation by changing the Line of Control (LoC) into line of peace, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Patron, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed today said the impact of the confidence building measures would largely depend on the political will to implement them, in both spirit and form.
Hailing the Prime Minister's assertion that the peace process with Pakistan will continue, despite difficulties, Sayeed said only through a sustainable dialogue process could, both the countries, build the necessary goodwill to tackle the most complex and contentious issues between them in the interest of the region's peace and prosperity. He said while both the countries have realized that the normalization process is irreversible, many challenges, including an amicable settlement of the Kashmir issue, still lie ahead. He said concrete steps need to be taken to galvanize the J&K-specific confidence building measures on either side of LoC, to speed up the peace process and reap its benefits.
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