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| PDP Patron interacts with US policy-makers | | Indo-Pak peace process moving in right direction: Sayeed | | Washington, Sep 28 – Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Patron, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed held wide-ranging discussion on the prevailing situation in Jammu & Kashmir with the US policy makers, congressional representatives, state department officials, diplomats, academicians, journalists and students of various American Universities at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here today.
Speaking on the occasion, Sayeed said despite going in fits and starts, the peace process between India and Pakistan, is moving in a right direction and various initiatives at the domestic, bilateral and international level have made the process credible and irreversible. He said not only the people on both sides have put their weight behind the peace process, for the first time after 2002 elections, the State Government got actively involved in facilitating various confidence building measures (CBM) to catalyze the peace initiatives. "From being a passive recipient of bilateral initiatives, the State Government, immediately after the October 2002 elections, took the centre-stage to facilitate and drive of the peace process," he said.
Sayeed said the State Government helped revival of social collaboration, political reconciliation and democratic participation, through innovative and historic steps. "Be it the healing-touch policy, opening of the Srinagar-Muzzaffarabad or the Poonch-Rawalakote roads, or allowing travel on permit and not passport basis, it all added up to a collective political engagement and consequent reduction in the structural and individual alienation," he said and added that these were not events but processes that catalyzed the peace process on the bilateral front.
Sayeed said the local stakes in the peace process have grown manifold during the past five years and it has generated a consensus among the concerned parties for the amicable settlement of the Kashmir problem. "It has created a new basis of legitimacy for the peace process by the only and ultimate source of authority - the people of the State itself," he said and added that the challenge before the leadership of the two countries now is not only in sustaining the process but also ensuring that it is insulated from the day-to-day setbacks that have often derailed it in the past.
The PDP Patron said that conceptually, the challenge in J&K is to economically integrate the region without disturbing the extant sovereign authority over delimited territorial space adding ‘there was no need to negate the significance of the LoC’ .
The interaction was followed by an extensive question-answer session on various aspects of the Kashmir issue and its impact on the regional politics. The session was moderated by former US diplomat Ambassador Teresita Schaffer.
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