Pakistan Won’t Take ‘Dictation’ From India To Meet Hurriyat Leaders; Refuses

Kashmiri separatist leaders in Jammu and Kashmir said Pakistan’s envoy in New Delhi had invited them for talks with Aziz.

India hit back accusing Pakistan of trying to evade its commitment to engage in a substantive discussion on terrorism as had been agreed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Ufa (Russia) last month.

Making things more hard, a Pakistani foreign office statement issued in Islamabad said that “the Hurriyat leaders are true representatives of the Kashmiri people”.

“India has always held the position that there are only two stakeholders in our relationship, not three”, he said.

“But unilateral imposition of new conditions and distortion of the agreed agenda can not be the basis for going forward”.

Pakistan will make no compromises over a planned meeting with Kashmiri Hurriyat leaders ahead of talks between the two countries’ top security advisers in New Delhi, the political and military leadership decided today.

The stand taken by the Modi government was a dramatic departure from the more tolerant ambivalence displayed by the previous Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee dispensations, regarding contacts between the Pakistanis and the APHC.

According Indian Media, Indian government called off dialogues because Pakistan had rejected its dmenad to not meet Kasmiri Hurriyat leaders during Sartaj Aziz’s Indian visit.

Pakistani and Indian border forces now routinely trade fires despite the 2003 ceasefire in Kashmir.

“The Ufa understanding on the talks – read out jointly by the two Foreign Secretaries – was very clear: the NSAs were to meet to discuss all issues connected to terrorism. Pakistan should cooperate and joing the fight against terror and terrorists”. There is also talk that the central government may detain the Hurriyat leaders in Delhi if they turned up for talks with Aziz.

The Hurriyat Conference, however, says that their talks with Pakistan were “nothing new” and that the BJP-ruled Centre’s approach on Kashmir was unacceptable. If some Hurriyat leaders insist on the meeting, they may be detained at Delhi, sources said.

One analyst said that both countries will have to show flexibility in dealing with the complicated matter and the upcoming meeting would be a step forward as a confidence-building measure for the leaders of both countries to follow up with policies that would redound to the peace and stability in the contested region.

However, Syed Ali Shah Geelani is scheduled to have a one-on-one conversation with the NSA on Monday morning.

Going by the terms of the July 10 India-Pakistan statement at Ufa, these talks are meant to focus only on “all issues connected to terrorism”.

In return, Pakistan has been expected to bring up India’s alleged interference in its Balochistan province, where there is a strong separatist movement, as well as for the 2007 bombing of a cross-border train that mostly killed Pakistanis.