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Political Dialogue Opens On Kashmir
NEW DELHI, April 15 (News Agencies) - The Indian government on Sunday announced the beginning of the first round of a political dialogue in Kashmir to resolve violence which has claimed more than 34,000 lives in the disputed region since 1989.
India's chief negotiator for Kashmir, Krishna Chandra Pant, made the announcement after sending invitations Sunday to regional groups as well as the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella forum of some two-dozen Kashmiri political groups.
Mir Quasim, a former Kashmir state chief minister, was the first to respond and reached Pant's New Delhi residence Sunday for the talks.
Pant, the head of Indian government's policy-making Planning Commission, said the talks were in line with New Delhi's April 5th invitation to all Kashmiri groups to join the dialogue, which aims to restore peace in the Indian zone of Kashmir.
The Indian negotiator said he had invited Kashmiri parliamentarians, regional legislators and an array of local leaders with "representative capacity" to participate in the first such government-sponsored dialogue.
Political representatives from Kashmir's Buddhist-dominated Ladakh region, as well as leaders from Kargil, the site of a 1999 India-Pakistan military conflict, were also sent invitations.
"This is the first round of talks," Pant said, adding that if necessary, he would travel to the Kashmiri summer capital of Srinagar, the troubled state's urban hub of Islamic secessionism.
Pant, who has headed 10 federal ministries in a political career spanning three decades, said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's government had not fixed a time frame for the talks.
"It is a sincere effort. I have no targets as it is bound to take time since the dialogue is a process and not an event," he said, after a first round of talks with Quasim, who in the past 15 years had been in Kashmir's political wilderness.
The Hurriyat in Kashmir appeared to be cautious.
"Once we receive the invitation we will consider it and come up with our response," Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone said in Srinagar.
Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah warned any rejection of the offer by the Hurriyat could be political suicide by the forum.
"The Hurriyat will be eliminated if it does not join the talks", he said and added: "All groups and political parties would join the talks to find a way out of the current difficult situation."
Quasim, after meeting Pant, said: "A majority of people in Kashmir are silent today and there is a need to restore their confidence before moving towards strengthening the peace process and all parties will come forward in this."
The chief negotiator said the doors were also open to Kashmir's opposition groups but ruled out the involvement of Pakistan-based separatists such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has rejected India's unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir.
"The doors are also not closed to groups engaged in militancy but are desirous of talks," Pant said, without naming the Kashmir-based organizations with which India is keen to establish political contact.
Pant also said he was certain the Hurriyat would participate.
"I hope the Hurriyat will join the talks as there are no reasons for them to say 'no'. The whole of Kashmir is watching them and this factor will weigh on the Hurriyat's decision," he said.
Some Hurriyat leaders have said they would engage in such a dialogue only if New Delhi issued travel documents allowing its leaders to visit Pakistan for talks with groups and officials there.
Pant, one of the main architects of conducting elections in Kashmir in the 1980s, said the issue could be thrashed out. "Let them talk to me so that I understand why they want to go to Pakistan."
India allegedly suspended counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir on November 28th. The truce has since been extended three times and is due to expire at the end of May.
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