Hurriat (M) asks India and Pak to take peace process forward

New Delhi, Feb 22 (UNI) India and Pakistan should not allow incidents like the Samjhauta Express blasts to disrupt the ongoing talks and both the countries should ''institutionalise'' and ''take forward'' the ongoing peace process in the larger interest of their people, the moderate Hurriyat Conference said today.

''Delhi and Islamabad must institutionalise and consolidate the peace process so that people-centric CBMs are taken and the ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir improves,'' moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq told reporters after an almost two-hour-meeting with Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri here at the Pakistan High Commission.

''The peace process must be taken forward and Hurriyat supports both India and Pakistan in this initiative,'' the Mirwaiz said.

He reiterated the demand of inclusion of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in the peace process, saying it was a consultative process and the people have to be a part of it.

The Mirwaiz was leading a delegation comprising Maulana Abbas Ansari, Bilal Lone and Aga Syed Hassan at the meeting with Mr Kasuri, who was here on a three-day official visit to co-chair the revived India-Pakistan Joint Commission Meeting (JCM) and hold talks with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on carrying forward the peace process.

Sources said Mr Kasuri, who was accompanied by senior Pakistani officials, asked the warring secessionists to forge unity to present a united stand on Kashmir.

''If the separatists come together on one platform it will be easy for Pakistan to negotiate with India on Kashmir,'' they said.

Asking India to support an intra-Kashmir dialogue the Mirwaiz said it will enhanced people to people contact within the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir.

''The Pakistan government is already supporting the intra-Kashmir dialogue and India must allow people to move across LoC freely. Both the governments must insure that people keep meeting each other'', he added.

About the alleged human rights violation in the state, the Hurriyat chairman said all the cases should be investigated and the guilty brought to book.

Recently, the divide between the two factions of the Hurriyat deepened further with Mirwaiz Farooq supporting Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's four-point Kashmir formula and hardliner Syed Ali shah Geelani opposing it.

Pakistan has been making efforts for long to bring the separatists together in the ''larger interest of the Kashmir cause'' but it has failed time and again.

As part of the efforts, every senior Pakistani leader and official during their India visit has held talks with the separatists in New Delhi.

This was the separatists' second meeting with a senior Pakistan functionary in the past three months in New Delhi after their November meeting with Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan, on the sidelines of the Indo-Pak foreign-secretary level dialogue.

In January, the Mirwaiz, accompanied by Mr Lone and senior Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Bhat, visited Pakistan for ten days for talks with the leadership of that country on Kashmir and the President's formula comprising no change in boundaries of Kashmir, making borders and LoC irrelevant, demilitarisation and self-governance.

UNI