With the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus link in place, New Delhi is now making a serious attempt to get peace talks with Kashmiri separatists back on track.While Home Minister Shivraj Patil has reiterated the UPA’s commitment to talks, a key interlocutor outside his ministry is learnt to have initiated a backchannel link with the separatists, including moderate Hurriyat leaders, to convince them to return to the negotiating table.Significantly, at least five top separatist leaders are currently in the Capital, though for different reasons: Mirwaiz Umer Farooq is learning Persian at the Iranian Cultural Centre, Yasin Malik and Syed Ali Shah Geelani are here for health reasons, Sajjad Lone is stationed in the Capital while his wife and children are on a visit to Pakistan and there’s Bilal Lone, too. Even Ghulam Nabi Soomji, who is with Geelani, is in the city.And, it is understood that Umer Farooq, Yasin Malik and the Lone brothers are constantly in touch with the Centre’s interlocutor with both sides, exchanging views on the Kashmiri issues, although hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani has been kept out of the engagement till now.But the establishment appears to be slightly divided on the way ahead with a section of internal security apparatus advocating a hard line on tackling the separatists. They believe that the separatist leaders have been marginalised following the failure of their boycott call during the civic elections.However, the government appears serious about a peace dialogue, paving the way for a settlement of the Kashmir problem.The separatists, meanwhile, are learnt to have conveyed their concern bout the use of coercion by mainstream political parties in the Valley on voters in south Kashmir—Bij Behara, Anantnag and Pulwama—in the recent civic elections. Their complaint is that a ruling party used militants to force the voters to cast votes in its favour.New Delhi is willing to look at these complaints, and is also learnt to be sharing with the leaders its plan to empower panchayats in Kashmir.As of now, the roadmap to peace indicates an attempt to get the separatists into mainstream politics and cut into Pakistan’s capability to scuttle the dialogue.
