AAC party slams SKM for provocative statement against Mirwaiz

Srinagar, Jan 23 (UNI) The Awami Action Committee (AAC) today lashed out at the Save Kashmir Movement (SKM), a militant organisation, for calling its chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq a ''political renegade''.

''Vested interests and anti-movement elements such as the so-called SKM are spending sleepless nights since India and Pakistan stepped up efforts to resolve the Kashmir issue in a peaceful and amicable manner,'' a spokesman of the AAC said in a statement here.

The AAC is part of the moderate Hurriyat Conference and both the groups are headed by the Mirwaiz.

He said the statement has come at a time when a three-member moderate Hurriyat Conference, led by the Mirwaiz, was on a visit to Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to hold negotiations with the political and militant leadership on the resolution of the long-standing Kashmir issue.

''It clearly shows their frustration and as such these elements in the garb of militants issue provocative statements and launch baseless propaganda against the Mirwaiz and other pro-freedom separatist leaders,'' the spokesman added.

He said these ''defeated'' elements have given a ''wrong twist and meaning'' to the Mirwaiz's appeal to militants to support the ongoing peace process in Jammu and Kashmir.

''They have given the impression that the Mirwaiz had issued an appeal to militants to drop gun and end armed struggle in Jammu and Kashmir,'' the spokesman added.

He said these elements should keep this in mind that enough ''water has flown down the river Jhelum'' and the people of the state can differentiate between the right and the wrong.

''No section of the society in Jammu and Kashmir is safe from these elements. They have even targetted pro-freedom leaders and the media as well and are strongly against any peaceful and lasting settlement of the Kashmir issue,'' the spokesman said.

If the ongoing peace talks fail, he claimed there would be ''tension and unrest'' in both India and Pakistan besides every possibility of ''war breaking out'' between the two countries.

The SKM, in a statement to the local media here, had vowed to defeat the designs of, what it called ''political renegades.'' Reacting sharply to the Mirwaiz's call to militants to end the armed struggle in Jammu and Kashmir, SKM spokesman Kamran Aslam said this ''defeatist and indolent group'' has been completely exposed In view of its ''nefarious'' activities.

''These robbers, donning the mantle of separatist leaders, have no right to claim the leadership of freedom movement in Jammu and Kashmir,'' Aslam said.

''We caution all the militant organisations and the sincere leadership that after a tribe of renegades led by Kuka Parray, now political deviants under the patronage of the Mirwaiz are openly coming out at the behest of the Indian agencies,'' he alleged.

The spokesman said, the militants have defeated the renegades in the past and carried forward the ongoing ''freedom'' movement.

''Now they (militants), along with the freedom loving people and sincere pro-movement leadership, will in the same way defeat the designs of all the political renegades to take the ongoing struggle to its logical end,'' he said.

UNI