Talk to Salahuddin, plead parties

April 8,2007

Talk to Salahuddin, plead parties
Jammu, April 7 The common man here is confused as the Kashmir-based political parties have suddenly started pleading that no solution to the J&K problem will be viable without talking to Syed Salahuddin, who is one of India's most wanted terrorist.                   Syed Salahuddin

Talk to Salahuddin, plead parties
S.P. Sharma
Tribune News Service

Jammu, April 7
The common man here is confused as the Kashmir-based political parties have suddenly started pleading that no solution to the J&K problem will be viable without talking to Syed Salahuddin, who is one of India's most wanted terrorist.

The latest to jump on to the bandwagon is the National Conference (NC) whose president, Omar Abdullah, said here that Salahuddin could play an important role in the peace process.

Salahuddin, supreme commander of the Pakistan-based United Jehad Council (UJC), which is an umbrella organisation of 19 terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir, has been spitting venom against India while sitting in Islamabad. He tops the list of the 20 most wanted persons which India sent to Pakistan and the Interpol in 2002.

Transport minister Hakeem Yaseen, who was closely associated with Salahuddin when both contested the Assembly elections of 1987 in Srinagar, told this correspondent today that the peace process could not succeed without India talking to Salahuddin and hardliners among the separatists, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

CPM leader and MLA Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, without naming Salahuddin, has issued two statements in the past few days urging India to invite all shades of opinion for talks.

Taking an identical stand as that of the PDP, Salahuddin in a fax message to a Srinagar-based news agency last week, suggested that the peace process could be made meaningful only if the troops were pulled out of Kashmir and the "draconian" laws repealed.

It is worth mentioning that while on one hand the demand for initiating dialogue with Salahuddin was being made here, several Kashmiri leaders were camping in New Delhi during the SAARC meeting where they met the Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri. Mirwaiz Farooq and the Democratic Freedom Party chief, Shabir Shah, called on Aziz and are learnt to have discussed the Kashmir issue.