Making A Difference

Break Step Bridge

Ambivalent its results may have been, but New Delhi finds enough pluses in the Hurriyat visit to work on<a href=pti_coverage.asp?gid=61 target=_blank> Updates</a>

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Break Step Bridge
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With the Kashmiri separatist leaders returning from an unprecedented visit to Pakistan, characterised as historic by Islamabad, the question now is: how does New Delhi take the next step of talking to the Hurriyat? Choosing to maintain a studied official silence on the Kashmiri leaders' visit, senior government officials are not yet prepared to spell out when the talks would happen and what would be discussed. But there is a general agreement that the visit has more or less set the ground for an exchange of views between New Delhi and the Hurriyat.

A senior official typified this open-ended, yet unhurried stance, saying: "If the Hurriyat wants to meet the PM, they should say so." The implication: the Hurriyat can't hope for the government to invite them for talks; rather they have to express their desire for parleys.

A week after the separatist leaders returned, there's some heartburn in certain quarters at Pakistan's violation of its agreement with India on the Hurriyat leaders' travel plan. It had been agreed that those taking the Srinagar-Muzaffarbad bus wouldn't be allowed to utilise travel permits to venture beyond Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). As a senior source put it: "Right from day one, the prime minister said he had no objections to the Hurriyat going to Pakistan. But what they did was surreptitious. Passports should have been stamped once they left PoK for Pakistan." This surreptitious course was adopted because the Kashmiri leaders would have had to travel on Indian passports, and their stamping in Pakistan would have symbolised Islamabad's acceptance of Kashmir being India's.

There's also anger over former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee's letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying that the UPA government has allowed the peace process to become Kashmir-centric. "As far as the Hurriyat visit is concerned, it was the NDA government that allowed the Hurriyat to meet anybody coming from Pakistan, each time any Pakistan dignitary came. Suddenly for them to say that we have allowed the Hurriyat to meet them in Islamabad is ridiculous," bristles an official.

Doing a cost benefit analysis of the separatist leaders' visit to Pakistan, officials say they see some encouraging signs. For one, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has anointed Mirwaiz Umer Farooq as the Hurriyat leader. This symbolises Pakistan's acceptance of the primacy of dialogue over jehad, a brand of politics the Mirwaiz isn't associated with.

Government sources list out other heartening aspects of Musharraf's meeting with the Kashmiri leaders. Not only was he critical of the Kashmiri hardliner, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the president emphasised that any solution for Kashmir has to be acceptable to New Delhi—a huge change from earlier talk of independence and UN resolutions. The meeting also demonstrated that Musharraf did not have a solution for Kashmir; and that Pakistan accepts the need for the Hurriyat to demonstrate its representative character.

Musharraf didn't spell out a method through which the Hurriyat should prove its representative character. But "the bottomline," declares a senior official, "is that they are going to be looking at something pragmatic." It could, for instance, take the form of Hurriyat leaders initiating a mass contact programme in the Valley and outside. Politically, their attempt would be to expand further from Valley politics.

The Pakistani aim, explains another senior official, "is to legitimise the pro-secessionist overground platform with or without Geelani." Officials say Musharraf remains committed to the peace process, but doesn't want to stir the hornet's nest at this juncture through a head-on confrontation with the hardliners who are already ganging up.

Government sources say expectations of a ceasefire were belied because of Hizbul Mujahideen leader SyedSalahuddin. He told the visiting Kashmiri leaders that ceasefire was possible if Geelani was included in the process, "pro-India elements kept out of the process" and there was withdrawal of Indian troops from the Valley. Simultaneously, sources reveal, Salahuddin spoke to Geelani five times between June 7 and June 14, emphasising that he was still relevant to the process and should work in tandem with Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah.

But these are still early days, and no thoughts have yet coalesced on a method of taking the initiative forward. Any movement on this front will have to wait at least till the end of July, say sources.

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