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| Pak mission throws a googly at Mahbooba Mufti | | | ABID SHAH
NEW DELHI, DEC 20: The denial or at least delay in extending visa to People’s Democratic Party leader Mahbooba Mufti by the Pakistan High Commission here may be interpreted differently by different sections.
Yet the High Commission’s move has significantly come along side its envoy Shahid Malik’s interview to a television channel here blaming New Delhi of continuing to be cold to the offer of talks by Islamabad leading to a diplomatic vacuum that was detrimental to peace in the region.
And the Pakistani mission here is shying away from commenting about the visa sought by the Opposition leader from Jammu and Kashmir. The idea behind withholding the visa to Mahbooba Mufti is to provoke the mainstream party leaders from Jammu and Kashmir in resenting Pakistan and its moves more and thereby contribute to polarisation of opinion through a war of words between them and separatist Hurriyat leaders.
This is more so since Pakistan is ready to receive All Party Hurriyat Conference leaders, including its chairman Maulvi Mohammed Umar Farooq with open arms. The Mirwaiz has of late not been so warm to the idea of talks with New Delhi through what the Union Home Ministry calls here as quiet diplomacy as has been the case until a few weeks before.
The reason for this being belying of expectations from the Central Bureau of Investigation report in the probe of the midsummer murder and alleged rape of to Shopian ladies.
Mahbooba Mufti too has been critical of the CBI report in the Shopian case. And as passions run high in the Valley in the wake of this, Pakistan wants to applaud the rage betaking the Valley from a distance and flaunt its ideas of peace where New Delhi has unnecessarily been too insistent about sorting out the last year’s Mumbai attack before resuming talks with Islamabad.
An indication of the wide gap between leaders of political parties of Jammu and Kashmir and separatists led by Hurriyat became evident when the other day the former welcomed the withdrawal of 30,000 Armymen in a year’s time as per the announcement made by Union Defence Minister, AK Antony. On Friday Mirwaiz refuse to believe this and called it a stunt.
As one would remember since August this year there have been reports that the Member of Parliament from Darjeeling, Jaswant Singh, would visit Pakistan to sign and promote his book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Yet he has not been able to make the visit thus far. Only vague reasons have been given ever since like the MP would visit after Ramzan. Yet Jaswant’s visit was postponed at a time when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was facing the ire of Opposition and media back home for agreeing for the Foreign Secretary level dialogue between India and Pakistan at Egypt’s holiday resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh in July this year.
Pakistan’s High Commissioner here referred to Sahrm-el-Sheikh Joint Communiqué in his today’s interview saying that India was retracting from the commitment it made on July 16 this year at Sahrm-el-Sheikh by shunning Islamabad’s offer for talks.
Moreover, there are reports that the former Vice Chancellor of Jammu University Amitabh Mattoo has been given visa for visit to Pakistan to enable him to attend the same conference for which Mahbooba too was invited. Obviously, Islamambad prefers to impress Indian intelligentsia more than India’s political leaders.
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