Tarigami urges India, Pak to be flexible on Kashmir

Srinagar, Mar 12: Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami has called upon the Indian and Pakistani leadership to show flexibility and reconciliation in resolving the contentious issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, to achieve common objective of people's welfare.

''Flexibility and reconciliation is the need of the hour.

Majority in the sub-continent want peace but the leadership of India and Pakistan has to exhibit the will and capacity to carry out the mandate. This means a change in the mind-set keeping in mind the sensitivities of Jammu and Kashmir as well as those of the two countries,'' he said at the three-day international conference on Kashmir, organised by Pugwash, in Islamabad from March 10 to 12.

In his statement at Pugwash, a copy of which was faxed to UNI from Islamabad, Mr Tarigami said during the past 16 years, Jammu and Kashmir has suffered immensely as thousands of people have lost their lives.

''The lingering issue has resulted in immense human miseries, inflicting deep wounds upon the Kashmiri psyche and ethos. Its very existence is at stake today. We have a fractured state handed down to us in the aftermath of partition, accompanied by unprecedented bloodbath, displacement, division and disintegration of millions of families, ever known to the history of nations,'' he added.

''During the past 16 years, the areas under our graveyards have been increasing unimaginably, the wails and laments of the widows and the half-widows (a new class of suffering destitute women whose husbands are missing), orphans and mothers fill the atmosphere with pathos and melancholy,'' Mr Tarigami said.

UNI