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Omar Abdullah changes stance:
Now wants tripartite talks, offers to mediate
WSN Network
 SRINAGAR:
Politics in Kashmir is taking a turn for the dramatic, and all of a
sudden. Till only recently, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar
Abdullah was trying to keep the talks between the government and the
moderate sections of the Kashmiri fighting domain away rfom the
prying eyes of the media. He advocated behind the scenes talks which
often lead to allegations of cutting deals. But now, it seems, the
young Abdullah is seeing the light of the day.
Changing his
stand drastically, Omar Abdullah has now favoured tripartite talks
among not just India, Pakistan and separatist leadership but also
offered to be a facilitator if militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen
wanted to come to the negotiating table.
Interestingly,
he has made these remarks on a TV channel.
The 39-year-old
Chief Minister, however, had a word of caution for moderate Hurriyat
Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq asking him to take his other members on
board for talks as “otherwise all they will do is [to] jump on to
the hard-line bandwagon and threaten the process.”
“I think again
[it is] realistic. You are not going to get a situation where New
Delhi, Islamabad and the Hurriyat are going to be sitting at the
same table — it is not going to happen. Therefore, if you can work a
system wherein you engage with Islamabad and you engage with New
Delhi, both at the same time, I see no harm in it.”
“We have done it
from the mainstream point of view. I have had engagement with the
government of Pakistan as well as the government of India, and I
don’t think anything harmful has come out of that,” Omar Abdullah
told Karan Thapar in ‘Devil’s Advocate’ programme of CNN-IBN.
Abdullah also
chose to make it clear that his government would not only like to
play the “role of facilitator” for Hurriyat Conference only but also
for militant groups like Hizbul Mujahideen “as long as they give up
the wrong side, the path of violence.” “Yes, I don’t see any problem
because we have done that not only in J&K, as I said, but also in
the other States,” he said.
The Chief
Minister said, “well, if they are willing to, as I said, shift from
a path of violence. Then sure I believe it would be possible for the
State government to ask the government of India to engage them and
if necessary for the State government to engage them as well — let’s
understand that they are really not looking for anything from the
State government. So our role is of a facilitator.”
To a question
about “secret talks” going on between the separatists and the
Centre, he said there was no harm in having a dialogue away from the
glare of media.
2
December 2009
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