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| Hurriyat’s mysterious silence as India and Pak warm up to talk | | | ABID SHAH
NEW DELHI, FEB 4: As India and Pakistan warm up to have bilateral talks at an international forum like SAARC to be possibly followed at official level through their Foreign Secretaries, the Srinagar-based All Party Hurriyat Conference remains somewhat indifferent or cold to these moves.
This has at least been so thus far after External Affairs Minister SM Krishna confirmed yesterday that his Cabinet colleague and Union Home Minister P Chidambarm would be visiting Pakistan for Feb 26-27 SAARC conference of Home Ministers from member countries which is slated to be held in Rawalpindi.
A garrisoned city has obviously been chosen as venue for the conference by the hosts in view of worrisome security situation that dogs most parts of the neighbouring country.
Notwithstanding this, the generally Pak-friendly Hurriyat should have been applauding the fact that Islamabad and New Delhi are stretching out their hands for a possible handshake. But its leading lights like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq have conspicuously been silent about this for at least past 24 hours after a visible thaw has taken place between Indo-Pak relations.
Though it is yet highly questionable whether the two countries would be able to walk away from the long drawn chill besetting their relations, Hurriyat’s keenness for this is intriguingly missing.
As for reasons for this beyond the discernible ones like the ill health of Syed Ali Shah Geelani who was admitted to Escorts Heart Research Centre here yesterday with complaints of chest pain, or Mirwaiz’s preoccupations like the one posed by curfew like situation in Srinagar after the recent death of a teenager in a police action, the reality still remains amiss.
Is it that both India and Pakistan decided to shun Hurriyat for the moment? Or is Hurriyat cold to the possible confabulations between the two countries because it suspects US to be behind brining Chidambaram and Rehman Malik under one roof in Rawalpindi?
There can be no definite answers to such questions until Hurriyat bosses open their mouth. Yet it is a fact that in the past Geelani has been critical of Pakistan’s US centric foreign policy which turned Islambad’s guns towards Talibans and their cohorts.
And as for Mirwaiz he has been advocating talks between India and Pakistan but he was soon out of the formers quiet diplomacy and latter’s invitation to him to visit Islamabad somehow did not materialise.
So is it going to be the case where Pakistan wants to move forward vis-à-vis its ties with India without taking Hurriyat on board? Or does New Delhi find it convenient to deal directly with Pakistan in order to bring quiet in the Kashmir Valley?
These are the likely questions which may well have unlikely answers beyond anybody, including Hurriyat’s comprehension for at least now. But what is quite clear is that no longer India is allowing Hurriyat to propose and Pakistan to dispose.
And, thus, New Delhi has been insisting that the first and foremost issue confronting the two countries is terror where its vendors and supporters are bound to be pushed to the backseat. |
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