Jammu, June 9
The All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) does not feel that as a result of the proposed summit meeting between the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Gen Pervez Musharraf, the 23-member conglomerate has been marginalised or sidelined.
“Sooner or later both Islamabad and New Delhi have to talk to us. We represent the sentiments of the majority of the people in Kashmir,” said Prof Abdul Gani Bhat.
Prof Bhat said the “involvement of the APHC in future parleys is unavoidable.” Asked to substantiate his claim that the APHC was the genuine representative of the people when it had not contested the Assembly elections, the chairman said. “No one asked Yasser Arafat or Nelson Mandela to contest elections for demonstrating their representative character.”
“When we staked claim for being the representatives of the people, nobody, except government agents and supporters, disputed our claim,” he said, adding that “we have no hesitation in contesting the elections, provided these are held under UN supervision.”
Prof Bhat said “even the Chief Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference activists cannot claim to be representatives of the people, despite the fact that the party has a two-third majority in the Assembly.” He explained that the government of India had stated, in clear terms, that during the 1996 Assembly poll, “non-voters had been assisted in stuffing the ballot boxes, which deprived the National Conference of any right to claim representative character.”
He said as many as 12 elections were held in the past and these had failed to resolve the Kashmir problem. “If these failed to settle the dispute, what guarantee one has that the next elections will resolve the issue”, he asked.
He said it was better for the government to hold a plebiscite. “Why not hold a plebiscite instead of Assembly poll”, he asked. When reminded that even Pakistan had sidelined the APHC by showing its unwillingness in arranging a meeting between General Musharraf and the Hurriyat leaders in Delhi, Prof Bhat said. “It is a summit meeting between heads of two countries. We cannot figure anywhere in such a meeting where even the Chief Ministers and other heads of political organisations will not be invited.”
At the same time, he said, neither Islamabad nor Delhi “can ignore us.”
Prof Bhat said at one stage the Government of India was not ready to accept “our demand for holding talks with Islamabad.” Now Delhi had agreed to do so and the Prime Minister had invited General Musharraf to Delhi for negotiations. He predicted that the second step would be “talks with us.”
Asked whether the summit would be result-oriented or a prolonged affair, Prof Bhat said, “Mr Vajpayee and General Muhsarraf had to talk. They have to move fast because the situation in the subcontinent, including Kashmir, is moving fast.”
For the time-being, neither the APHC nor any other separatist group is a factor to reckon with in Kashmir. If a miracle takes place and the Vajpayee-Musharraf talks result in an abrupt end to terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, the APHC and others may be rendered, as one senior government functionary said, “ as good as spurious medicine.”
But if the talks failed, the separatists operating in Kashmir will again become relevant.
