Asia Times: Kashmiri separatist leaders to appeal to Annan


	March 15, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Kashmiri separatist leaders to appeal to Annan
By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI - Disappointed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's stand that the Kashmir dispute must be resolved by India and Pakistan alone, key Kashmiri separatist leaders say they will directly appeal to Annan for the world body's intervention.

The All Party Hurriyat Conference - a coalition of 14 Kashmiri political separatist groups - will send a senior leader to meet the UN secretary-general when he arrives in the Indian capital on Thursday, on the final leg of his South Asian tour.

Annan began his week-long visit to the region in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, where he said the key to resolving the five decade-old dispute between the nuclear capable South Asian nations lay in existing bilateral agreements, rather than in UN resolutions dating back to the year 1948. Annan also said there the UN resolutions on Kashmir could not be compared to those of the world body on Iraq and East Timor.

Dismay in Islamabad at Annan's statements, was evident in comment in the hawkish Pakistani Nawai-e-Waqt newspaper. "For a long while, Pakistan indulged in wishful thinking that an honorable settlement of the Kashmir dispute is possible with the help of the international community and the UN," the paper said. The daily added: "... the only way to resolve the Kashmir issue is to strengthen Pakistan in economic and defense-related areas and to step up jihad (holy war) and take it to its successful conclusion."

On the flip side, Annan's statement was "music to India's ears", as described by Indian media. An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said Annan's view "vindicated India's long-held position on Kashmir".

However, the Hurriyat which, along with Islamabad, wants UN mediation in the Kashmir dispute, was also disappointed. "It is the primary duty of the UN to ensure peace all over the world and Kashmir cannot be an exception," Hurriyat chief Abdul Ghani Bhatt said.

"We have decided to tell the [UN] secretary general of the serious consequences in the event of war between India and Pakistan if the Kashmir issue is not resolved peacefully immediately," said a Hurriyat spokesman in Srinagar, the capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, which includes the disputed Kashmir Valley.

The Hurriyat is also disappointed with the Indian government's refusal to accept the separatist grouping as a mediator in the India-Pakistan dispute. India's tough-talking Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani has also denied some Hurriyat leaders permission to travel to Pakistan for a dialogue with leaders of Pakistan-based, Kashmiri militant outifits.

In keeping with a bold Kashmir peace bid in the past few months, New Delhi has for the first time decided to allow the Kashmiri separatist leaders to travel to Pakistan. The Hurriyat leaders are expected to persuade Pakistan-based, Kashmiri militant groups to accept a three-month-old Indian ceasefire offered to Kashmiri militants.

Indian media commentators have criticized the refusal of travel permission to all Hurriyat leaders. The Hindu newspaper said this would undermine New Delhi's Kashmir peace bid. The Hurriyat visit to Pakistan was "for clearly confidence-building purposes rather than any mediatory intervention", the daily said.

The denial of travel permission had dented Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's pledge to "steer away from the beaten track of polemical diplomacy" in tackling the Kashmir issue, it added. "Advani's refusal to allow them [Hurriyat leaders] to visit Pakistan shows an attitude that is not based on facts. He looks like going against the general opinion in the country, which favors Hurriyat's trip to Pakistan," said eminent media columnist Kuldip Nayyar.

But the Hurriyat itself has lately been troubled by dissent, with one group led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani - one of those denied a passport - insisting that the Kashmir dispute was essentially religious in nature.

Pakistan argues that Muslim-majority Kashmir should have been made part of Pakistan when the subcontinent was partitioned on religious lines by former colonial British rulers in 1947. Kashmir's Hindu ruler joined India soon after the subcontinent's independence, which led to the first of two India-Pakistan wars over Kashmir.

Geelani, who leads the conservative Islamic Jamaat-e-Islami group, is also a member of the Constituent Council of the Rabita Alami Islami (World Muslim League), based in the Muslim holy city of Mecca. Geelani was not invited to the Hurriyat meeting to discuss Annan's statement. A Hurriyat spokesman said that senior Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone would seek a meeting with Annan in New Delhi.

Lone is to tell the UN secretary-general about the "aspirations of the Kashmiri people, the worsening human rights situation in the Kashmir valley and the urgency of a quick resolution". This will be Annan's second visit to India as UN secretary-general and he is expected to urge New Delhi to resume diplomatic dialogue with Islamabad, which was broken off after the undeclared India-Pakistan war two years ago.

New Delhi feels that Annan has strengthened its position by his assertion that the Kashmir dispute must be tackled in the spirit of the 1972 Shimla treaty and the Lahore Declaration, issued during the Indian premier's historic bus ride to that Pakistani city two years ago.

"His endorsement of the Lahore Declaration and the Shimla Agreement [which commits both sides to avoid third-party involvement in the dispute] has certainly made things easier for us," said an Indian foreign ministry official.

New Delhi, however, insists that Pakistan stop backing "cross- border terrorism" in Kashmir before talks can begin. Media commentators think that New Delhi will have to modify this stand. "Any argument at present by New Delhi against the urgency of a direct re-engagement with Islamabad will lend itself to severe scrutiny, perhaps by the larger international community," said the Hindu.

(Inter Press Service)