[sacw] Shabir Shah asks India, Pak to start a 'spring of peace'

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI
South Asia Citizens Web
==============================
From: Hindustan Times,Thursday, February 18, 1999, New Delhi

Shabir Shah asks India, Pak to start a 'spring of peace'
Jammu, February 17 (HT Correspondent)

A PROMINENT Kashmiri separatist leader and president of the Jammu and
Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (JKDFP) Shabir Shah has asked Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart to seize the
"historic opportunity" of allowing the people of the two sides of Jammu and
Kashmir to meet and encourage them to find a solution to the "Kashmir
issue" that made the two nations go nuclear in the summer of 1998.
"Let them start a spring of peace in 1999", Shabir Shah told The Hindustan
Times while reacting to the proposed meet of Mr Vajpayee and Pakistani
Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif in Lahore on Sunday.

He said: "We want the two Prime Ministers to herald a new era of peace in
the subcontinent but not by sacrificing urges and aspirations of the
peoples of the State". Mr Shah said that the time has come for leaders of
the two nations to realise that by keeping the people of the two sides of
the Line of Control (LoC) separated will not help any body.

He appreciated the new found ways of friendship between the two countries
like bus diplomacy, travel of parliamentary groups and also trade relations
like sale and purchase of power. Mr Shah regretted that the core issue of
Kashmir was being addressed in a casual manner.

"It is an issue that concerns more than 12 million people living on both
sides of the LoC divided and separated by artificial barriers", Mr Shah
said. Mr Shah said that the representatives of Kashmir should be made to
interact and then allowed to participate in the process of finding a
solution.

"Unless that is done, permanent peace would remain elusive. That is the
lesson that history had delivered and we should learn from the past for a
stable and secure future",he added. Mr Shah whose JKDFP is considered a
moderate voice among the hardline separatists, though out of All Parties
Hurriyat Conference (APHC), the secessionist conglomerate of over two dozen
groups, shares with Hurriyat the line that "Kashmiris be given the right to
sit across the negotiation table when Kashmir is discussed between India
and Pakistan".

The argument of the Kashmiri separatist leadership is that they recognise
without questions that India and Pakistan were party to the "Kashmir
dispute". But they ask how they can ignore the people of Kashmir and their
representatives as a party".

This leadership has been critical of Indian leadership but it rebuffed
Pakistan last year when even Hurriyat declared that "Pakistan had no locus
standi to represent Kashmiris". This was a reaction to Pakistan Foreign
Secretary Shamshad Khan's assertion that "Pakistan would speak for
Kashmiris" at the Indo-Pak talks on Kashmir. On the other hand, Jammu and
Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah has declared that "since" Jammu and
Kashmir is an integral part of India, Kashmiris are represented by the
Indian leadership".
He is a relentless advocate of conversion of the existing line of control
(LoC) into a permanent international border for permanent peace in the
region.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/act
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com