SRINAGAR, 9 December 2005 — Indian government yesterday allowed a hard-line Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani to proceed to Saudi Arabia to perform Haj after being denied permission continuously for the past five years, sources said. The trip would be his first outside India in a decade.
“A top Kashmiri bureaucrat dealing with Haj affairs informed me over the telephone that I and my wife have been cleared for the Haj trip,” Geelani told reporters in Srinagar.
“It was a verbal information,” he said, adding that he had not received an official notice. Geelani leads a pro-Pakistan faction of Kashmir’s main separatist alliance — All-Parties Hurriyat Conference.
Sources said Geelani along with his wife Jawahira and former moderate Hurriyat Chairman Moulvi Abbas Ansari have all been given the permission to proceed to Saudi Arabia on the Haj pilgrimage. The sources said Geelani, his wife and Ansari are likely to leave for Jeddah on Dec. 17.
Rival Hurriyat Conference leaders Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq are expected to meet in Saudi Arabia in an alleged attempt by the Indian and Pakistani governments to bring about a reconciliation between the two. Mirwaiz was already in the Kingdom to represent the Hurriyat Conference in the 3rd Extraordinary Summit of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is scheduled to meet Mirwaiz in Saudi Arabia. Musharraf may try to broker a peace between Geelani and Mirwaiz, as a rapprochement between the rival factions of the Hurriyat Conference would enable them to unite in dealing with the Indian government.
