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| Hardliners ask moderates not to 'betray' Kashmiris | | Umar Farooq fails to have working groups | | BL KAK
NEW DELHI|JAN 29
The much-publicised, and much-debated, three-member delegation of moderate faction of Kashmir's Hurriyat Conference is back in India at the end of a 10-day visit to Pakistan. Even as many in Pakistan and in Indian Kashmir agreed with the Hurriyat delegation's emphasis on the continuance of the ongoing peace process, Maulvi Umar Farooq, who head the moderate team, failed to make any headway in his proposed formation of working groups on either side of the Line of Control (LoC).
The meeting that was held in Islamabad on the eve of the Hurriyat leaders' return to India, left none in doubt about the the divided opinion on the proposal favouring setting up of working groups in two Kashmirs. If some parties opposed the Maulvi's move, others favoured a wait-and-watch policy. Another development which set the Musharraf camp and moderate Hurriyat leaders thinking anew, related to the boycott of the meeting by the haredline Jamaat-e-Islami and Pakstan Peoples Party (PPP) of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) headed by Sultan Mehmood. Maulvi Farooq had announced the formation of ther working groups which, he explained, were aimed aty promoting intra-Kashmir dialogue and urged New Delhi and Islamabad to facilitate the movements of the leaders of two Kashmirs to take part in the meetings.
True, the first few days threw up encouraging signals in Pakistan for the thre-member Hurriyar Conference delgation largely due to warm courtesies extended by the Musharraf camp. Subsequently, however, the "honourable guests" headed by Maulvi Umar Farooq had to come across unsavoury messages. And the message number one was from the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), which asked Kashmir's All-Party Huriyat Conference (APHC) not to "betray" the Kashmiri people. JI leaders from Bagh told a news conference that Islamabad and New Delhi had no authority to decide how the Kashmir issue would be resolved. They charged Maulvi Umar Farooq, chief of the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference, with advocating proposals of Gen. Parvez Musharraf and Indian Premier, Manmohan Singh, seeking division of Kashmir.
More importantly, the JI leaders dropped the brick on the three-member APHC delegation by calling the Srinagar-based hardline separatist stalwart, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the "genuine" Kashmiri leader. Having found the Prime Minister of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), Attique Ahmad, warmly flirting with the Hurriyat leaders in Islamabad, the Jamaat-e-Islami leaders said that he had been made a weak Prime Minister to ignore the Kashmir issue and misappropriate earthquake relief aid.
Media reports from Islamabad confirmed that Maulvi Umar Farooq and his delegation members have failed to woo the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to accept President Pervez Musharraf’s proposal for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. The APHC delegation held a meeting with the PPP (of PoK) and its allies at the PPP Secretariat and discussed Gen. Musharraf’s four-point plan.
Kashmir People’s Conference chairman, Bilal Lone, Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhatt, ocupied Kashmir's PPP chief,Chaudhry Majeed, senior vice president, Chaudhry Yasin, and secretary general, Chaudhry Lateef Akbar, opposition leader, Qamaruz Zaman, and Jammu Kashmir People’s Party president, Khalid Ibrahim, attended the meeting. PPP leaders insisted that the Kashmir dispute could only be resolved in line with the United Nations resolutions. The APHC also failed to convince the PPP on working relations group meetings in Muzzaffarbad and Srinagar.
The Hurriyat leaders were reported to have said that they were disappointed by the opposition parties’ rigid stance. “All parties, ruling or opposition, religious or nationalist, should unite on one agenda for the solution of the Kashmir issue”, Maulvi Umer Farooq was quoted as saying.
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