Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Oct 31: Eight days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh announced “sustained dialogue” on Jammu and Kashmir and appointed former Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director Dineshwar Sharma as Centre’s representative, the Valley separatists today dismissed the talks offer as futile exercise.
The three top separatist leaders of Valley including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq today, in a joint statement, said the Government of India is continuously refusing to acknowledge Jammu and Kashmir as a dispute which, they said, is “basic premises” for talks. “In principle, the (separatist) leadership always advocated and supported sincere and productive dialogue as a means of conflict resolution over Jammu and Kashmir.
“What it inherently entails from all participants to dialogue is the basic acknowledgment that there is a dispute that has to be resolved. But Government of India continuously refuses to accept this basic premise and the reality on the ground,” said the separatist trio in the statement. The decision to dismiss the talks offer was taken after a joint meeting of Geelani, Mirwaiz and Malik here at former’s Hyderpora residence.
The separatist leadership, referring to Prime Minister’s hard hitting statement on Autonomy suggestion by Congress leader P Chidambaram, said if Government of India rejects the demand for restoration of Autonomy guaranteed by country’s Constitution, “how will such a dispensation in New Delhi address or engage with the Kashmiri people’s political will and aspiration of self-determination”.
Rejecting the comparison of Kashmir with Syria that was drawn by Dineshwar Sharma, the separatist trio said that it is “misleading” to compare the two. “To compare the internationally recognized 70-year-old political and humanitarian issue of Kashmir to that of the sectarian war and power struggle in Syria is deception and propaganda as there is no correlation between the two situations,” they said.
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