JAMMU, Feb 3 (UNI) — India is ready to talk to the Pakistani Generals behind the Kargil incursion and now running the government, if Islamabad gives genuine and adequate response to the Prime Minister’s peace initiative, former RAW chief and Special Secretary in the PM’s Office A.S. Dulat has said.
“The ball is now in the Pakistan court,” he said delivering the third Amar Kapoor Memorial Lecture, ‘Kashmir — the way ahead’, here on Thursday.
He, however, regretted that the response of Pakistan to India’s initiative had not been matching.
He said the atmosphere was “most conducive” for finding a solution to the Kashmir problem when Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. Kashmir too had pinned its hopes on Mr Vajpayee, he added.
“Dialogue is the only answer to the Kashmir problem,” he said adding that gradually everybody, including the All Party Hurriyat Conference, was moving towards peace.
He urged the APHC to show “more balance” and be “less vacillated”. “It (APHC) must learn to lead rather than being dictated. Otherwise it will be overtaken by organisations like the Laskher-e-Toiba,” he said.
Mr Dulat said the Hurriyat claim of being the “true representative of the Kashmiris” was without substance as its meetings were “still punctuated by phone calls from Pakistan”.
He said the APHC should talk to Delhi rather than Islamabad. The Indian federal system was accommodative and the Constitution flexible to satisfy the hopes and aspirations of the people, he added.
He said India was not under any international pressure to solve the Kashmir problem and the world did not favour the creation of new states on the basis of religion. In fact, the comity of nations supported taking ahead the political and democratic process further, he added.
He said the longing for peace in Kashmir was demonstrated in the huge voter turnout in the panchayat elections last month in the state.
Mr Dulat said violence had not increased in the past three months and said he supported Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah’s opinion of converting the Line of Control into an international border as a solution to the Kashmir problem.
