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Hurriyat urges India, Pakistan to talk

Basharat Peer in Srinagar

The All India Hurriyat Conference on Monday urged India and Pakistan to initiate a bilateral dialogue to resolve their differences.

Addressing an executive council meeting of the Hurriyat, its former chairman Mirwaiz Omar Farooq said an Indo-Pak war would lead the two countries nowhere.

"Even if India and Pakistan go to war, the basic disputes between the two countries would remain. They would need to talk even after that [the war]," he said.

He said the Kashmir tangle -- the bone of contention between the two countries -- cannot be resolved by fighting a war.

"The need is to look at the approach of peaceful dialogue between the two countries. Hope good sense will prevail both in India and Pakistan," he said.

The Hurriyat Conference will soon write letters to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf urging them to de-escalate.

"The people of Kashmir are the primary party to the dispute, so it is obligatory for us to voice our concerns and urge both countries to avoid a war," Hurriyat Conference chairman Professor Abdul Ghani Bhat said.

"We will not only write to Indian and Pakistani leaders, but also to important leaders of the international community and the United Nations. We will ask them to exercise their influence in preventing a war and resolve the issues leading to such circumstances," he said.

The Hurriyat Conference hopes that the Almaty conference, where both Prime Minister Vajpayee and Pakistani President Musharraf are present along with a host of world leaders, would help reduce the fears of war.

"Right now the positions of both the countries are known. But we hope that the world leaders will prevail upon on India and Pakistan at the Almaty conference and help prevent a war in the larger interest of South Asian security," the Mirwaiz said.

Bhat said the Hurriyat would look at ways by which the people of Kashmir and not the dispute between India and Pakistan obtain centrality in the discussions on Kashmir.

"The world talks about the Kashmir dispute, but Kashmiris do not figure anywhere. We will do something that will turn the attention of the world community towards the people of Kashmir," Bhat said.

Meanwhile, the slain Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone's son, Bilal, attended the first executive council meet of the forum on Monday and was formally inducted as an executive council member of the body.

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