PM invites Lone for talks on Kashmir

Sajjad Lone, the younger son of assassinated Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone, was invited to meet Singh on Saturday as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh continued his exercise to talk to all the separatist groups from Jammu and Kashmir.

Sajjad Lone was left out of the dialogue that Singh held with Kashmiri separatists in September.

Sajjad Lone broke away from the mainstream Hurriyat Conference, led by Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, after the Mirwaiz attended the funeral of one of the top Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commanders in Kashmir who, Lone charged, had killed his father. After this Lone split from his brother Bilal to form his own outfit, the People's Conference.

Lone's party is much smaller than all the others but is known for its idealism, its condemnation of Pakistan's disregard for human rights in the Pak-Occupied Kashmir as much as India's military violations in Kashmir.

Lone is against islamisation of the Kashmiri militancy. "We convened a meeting of the working committee after which a decision has been taken that a five-member delegation of the J&K People's Conference will meet the prime minister," Lone said in Srinagar.

The party termed the central move "positive" and would emphasise on identification of other parties and individuals necessary for an inclusive Kashmir participation, he said.

The working committee authorised party's vice-chairman Sheikh Bashir Ali to nominate the other four members of the team, to be headed by Lone, on Thursday. The prime minister had held talks with Hurriyat Conference on 5 September last year during which certain measures to prevent human rights violations were discussed.

However, there was no invitation to the leaders for the second round of talks so far, sources said.

They also confirmed that back channel talks were on with other separatist leaders of Jammu and Kashmir to come forward for talks.

Meanwhile, in Islamabad, days after Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf said India should demilitarise three cities, Pakistan made it clear that there would be no unilateral demilitarization of Kashmir and expressed the hope that India would show flexibility on the issue.

'Let me put it on record that there will be no unilateral demilitarization,' Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam categorically stated while responding to questions at a weekly news briefing here.

She said Pakistan's proposal of demilitarization was meant for both Jammu and Kashmir.

On the Indian Ministry of External Affair's (MEA) negative response to President Musharraf's proposals of demilitarization and self-governance in Kashmir, Aslam said: 'We do not want to get into the controversy over these ideas,' underlining that what the president had stated was clear.

The forthcoming Foreign Secretary level talks in India are to be held in February to start the third round of composite dialogue amid frosty weather both in India and Pakistan. The talks will decide how the peace process will go forward.

That Pakistan is pegging its expectations from the peace process low was clear from Aslam's reply: 'There may be disappointment but there is no despair, I assure you,' she said. Given that the composite dialogue process was to start she said: 'We hope that there will be flexibility and it will take this process further.'