PM likely to hold 2nd meeting with Hurriyat on May 3

New Delhi, Apr 28: Prime Minister Mammohan Singh is likely to hold the next round of talks with the moderate Hurriyat Conference here on May 3, ahead of the second Kashmir roundtable in Srinagar next month.

Sources told UNI that the meeting between the Prime Minister and the moderate Hurriyat leaders, held seven months after their first round of parleys, was expected to be held on May 3 and will play a ''crucial'' role in the separatist leaders' decision to attend the May 25 roundtable.

The moderate Hurriyat Conference, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, had conveyed through intermediatories involved in back channel negotiations, that the amalgam first wanted to hold a one-on-one meeting with the Prime Minister before deciding on attending the roundtable.

Amalgam sources said the separatist leaders wanted to hold discussions with the Prime Minister to explain their stand on several issues, including the roundtable.

Almost all top separatists, including the Hurriyat leaders, did not attend the first roundtable, held at the Prime Minister's 7 Race Course Residence on February 25.

The separatists want to discuss the progress made on the issues raised during the separatists' first round of talks on September 5 last year with Dr Singh, the sources said.

''They are not against the roundtable but they first want a separate meeting with Dr Singh to put forth their views. They want a meaningful dialogue and have suggested inviting only relevant people for the conference,'' the sources said.

''After the first meeting between Dr Singh and the Hurriyat leaders much has happened and the separatists want a new beginning...they also want to discuss the progress made on the issues raised during the talks,'' the sources said.

They said the Centre had invited people who it had no ideological differences with to discuss Kashmir which served no purpose.

During the September 5 meeting, the Prime Minister assured the separatist that a slew of measures, including troop reduction and time-bound review of cases under the Public Safety Act and POTA, will be considered for restoring peace in Jammu and Kashmir if violence and infiltration came to an end.

Both the sides agreed to carry forward the dialogue process so that all regions and shades of political opinion in the state were involved.

A five-member separatist delegation, comprising Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat, Maulana Abbas Ansari, Bilal Lone and Fazal Haq Qureshi, had met the Prime Minister.

Since September 2005, the Centre has allowed separatist leaders to travel to Pakistan. They have met Pakistani leadership, including President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, several times.

In a series of measures to broaden the scope of the dialogue beyond the Hurriyat Conference and arrive at a consensus on the vexed Kashmir issue, the Prime Minister first invited Peoples Conference chairman Sajjad Ghani Lone on January 14 for talks.

On February 17, Dr Singh held a dialogue with pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman Yasin Malik.

On February 25, Dr Singh convened the first ever all party conclave to ascertain views of all groups, including political leaders, separatists, academicians, NGO's and others from Jammu and Kashmir and arrive at a broad-based consensus on the imbroglio.

The move was dubbed as a ''bold initiative'' towards resolution of the Kashmir issue but lost much of its sheen due to non- participation of the secessionists.

Around 50 people were invited to the conference, which was also attended by Home Minister Shivraj Patil and several senior officials.

In 2004, the Hurriyat had held two rounds of talks with the previous NDA government.

The then Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani had twice met the Hurriyat leaders -- first on January 22, 2004 and later on March 27 the same year.

UNI