SRINAGAR, 23 May 2006 — The moderate faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference yesterday announced it would not take part in the prime minister’s second round table on Kashmir beginning in Srinagar tomorrow.
However, the Hurriyat kept open the option of meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh separately if he so wished during his stay in Srinagar.
The decision was conveyed by the moderate Hurriyat group Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq at the end of its executive and general council meeting in the Rajbagh headquarters of the separatist conglomerate.
“The crowd comprising political hypocrites and ikhwanis (renegades) with no agenda can hardly produce any results and thus it was unanimously decided not to attend the round-table conference,” Farooq told a crowded press conference.
However, the Kashmir cleric said, “We are ready to meet the prime minister separately in Srinagar to carry forward the dialogue process.”
But there was no indication from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) if a separate meeting would be scheduled after the Hurriyat’s decision to keep out of the two-day conclave.
“Their (Hurriyat) decision to stay out will not be construed as a setback to Manmohan Singh’s initiative to broaden the scope of the dialogue process. The prime minister wants to address all shades of opinion,” said a PMO source.
The two-day conference is being chaired by the prime minister amid unprecedented security following the fidayeen (suicide) attack at a Congress rally Sunday that claimed eight lives.
Even before Hurriyat’s decision yesterday, Umar had dropped sufficient hints that his conglomerate would not participate in the conference, describing the meetings as “meaningless exercises”.
A day earlier, addressing a rally at Eidgah, organized to commemorate the death anniversaries of his father, the late Mirwaiz Maulana Farooq, as well as senior Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone, Umar had said the engagement of dialogue should be primarily with those whom the central government had a difference of opinion with.
“Sharing a dais with those people who we feel are responsible for all the indignities of life as far as Kashmiris are concerned, it’s a bit difficult to share a platform with those people,” he had said.
“We feel that if you are to hold discussions and deliberations on Kashmir, firstly you have to give priority to those people who are the separatists or who are with this present movement.”
His other concern was that the round table would have been more meaningful if there was genuine representation from the other side — that is, Pakistan-administered Kashmir — of the Line of Control (LOC) or the cease-fire line in Kashmir.
“We will only talk at a forum where people who are party to the Kashmir issue are invited,”Umar had said.
Political observers in Kashmir described the Hurriyat decision as a dampener to efforts to bring the moderate separatist leaders to the table with those from mainstream political parties in the state.
The hard-line Hurriyat headed by Syed Ali Geelani has already rejected the offer.
The other prominent separatist leaders, including Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman Yasin Malik, Democratic Freedom Party Chairman Shabir Shah and People’s Conference leader Sajjad Lone have earlier announced their non-participation in the Kashmir round table.
The moderate Hurriyat faction had also skipped the first meeting held in Delhi in February this year that was attended by a cross-section of mainstream political parties, academics and other ethnic groups from the state.
Early this month the Hurriyat conference met Manmohan Singh again for a second round of talks and efforts were mounted by the PMO to get the separatist grouping on board for the second round table.
