News
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Dialogue key to Kashmir peace, says IHK CM* Omar tells Singh ‘sustained and meaningful’ engagement with Pakistan and APHC is only guarantee to peace in IHK
By Iftikhar Gilani
NEW DELHI: A day after the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India traded jabs, Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said on Saturday that a “sustained and meaningful” engagement with Pakistan and the Hurriyat leaders is the only guarantee of peace in IHK.
Abdullah made these remarks while meeting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. The IHK CM also met Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram and Indian National Congress (INC) President Sonia Gandhi. But the situation in IHK remained tense as protests and shutdown strikes continued to rock the valley. Abdullah asked Singh to restore a “sustained and meaningful” dialogue process with Pakistan and the Hurriyat leaders in IHK. Calling for urgent political initiatives, the IHK CM described the negotiation table as the only platform to discuss the issue. The Indian PM briefed Abdullah about the recent engagements with Pakistan and hoped that the progress made between 2004 and 2008 would be revived. The IHK CM told Singh that he believed that peace and prosperity in IHK was closely linked to a sustainable engagement with Pakistan and the internal political initiatives taken by New Delhi.
The Indian PM advised Abdullah to draft a comprehensive proposal to involve the IHK youth in the development process by providing them employment opportunities in the corporate sector. During his breakfast meeting with Chidambaram, the IHK CM asked Home Minister Chidambaram to provide the state government with non-lethal crowd-control equipment for the IHK police and paramilitary forces. “The plan of action for the days and weeks to come to deal with the present situation in IHK were discussed in the meeting,” a state government spokesman said.
“I have discussed with the home minister how to give better equipment to the paramilitary forces and IHK police so that they can control the crowd in better ways so that no incident takes place and no one dies,” Omar Abdullah told reporters after the meeting with P Chidambaram.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk