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Kashmiri separatists yesterday accepted a landmark talks offer from the Indian government, but said they would discuss a solution to the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan as well.
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a legal grouping of religious and political parties that wants Kashmir to be separate from India, responded to Wednesday's announcement that Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani would hold talks with them about the region's future.
Hurrriyat "has decided that within 10 days we will come up with a program, on the basis of which discussions will be held with India and Pakistan," former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat said.
India is opposed to three-way talks involving Kashmiri separatists and Pakistan. However, the Hurriyat has sought to get around this opposition in the past by saying they could meet both sides separately. Bhat did not give details of the group's proposal.
Advani is known as a hard-liner toward separatists and also the militants who have fought for 13 years to join India-held Jammu-Kashmir state to Pakistan or make it independent.
The government offered a meeting between him and Abbas Ansari, chief of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, who favors independence rather than merger with Pakistan.
Bhat said the Hurriyat will hold wide discussions to seek a solution to the Jammu and Kashmir problem "anywhere and anytime."
"The APHC has decided to procure a broad consensus," he said. "We will be holding discussions with all pro-movement groups within and outside the APHC, and to evolve a broader consensus on the offer made by the deputy priame minister, we will interact with the general public."
However, there are deep divisions among Kashmir's separatists. Some support Muslim-majority Kashmir's independence from both Hindu-majority India and mainly Muslim Pakistan, while others want the state to merge with Pakistan, which controls a portion of Kashmir.
The breakaway pro-Pakistan faction, now seemingly marginalized since Ansari's election as Hurriyat chief, has already rejected India's offer of talks.
"India should revoke its Parliament's 1994 resolution declaring Kashmir as its integral part," the breakaway faction's head, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, said.
(China Daily October 24, 2003)
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