NEW DELHI, JAN 17: Former RAW chief A S Dulhat will oversee Kashmir affairs in the Prime Minister's Office. Dulhat, appointed Officer on Special Duty (OSD), in the PMO after his recent retirement is ensconced in the large room in South Block which has, over the years, been occupied by media advisors to the prime minister.Dulhat has been a hands-on, low-profile officer, who has had a phenomenal contact network in Kashmir and the government has decided to use his services after retirement. Though he came up through the intelligence route, he is known to be a moderate and in favour of opening a dialogue with the Kashmiris to find a negotiated settlement to the tangle.The Prime Minister has brought Dulhat to help him with the handling of Kashmir at a crucial juncture, and he will be working with the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra.Dulhat has now to grapple with two divergent views at the top levels of government on how to handle Kashmir. First of all, there is the ticklish issue of granting a passport to Syed Ali Shah Geelani to go to Pakistan as part of the five-member delegation of the All Party Hurriyat Conference.On the one side are the hawks, and they include sizeable sections in North Block, in the National Conference which is naturally upset with the representative character the Pakistan visit would confer on the Hurriyat, and in the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. They have managed to get the government to defer the decision on the passports for the time being, upping their ante after the attack on the Red Fort, the threat of an attack on the PMO and the grenades lobbed at Farooq Abdullah.The hawks are naturally upset with the provocative statements made by Geelani recently that the Hurriyat struggle is not so much for Kashmir as in defence of Islam. Yasin Malik, chief of the JKLF, locked horns with Geelani on this at the recent meeting of the Hurriyat. Malik, who is not among the five selected by the Hurriyat chief Abdul Ghani Bhat to go to Pakistan, has applied separately to the government for a passport on medical grounds. His case was recommended by Rajya Sabha MP Kuldip Nayyar and the home minister has promised to look into it. As for the five leaders slated to go to Pakistan, L.K. Advani had stated that the ministry would look into them ``case by case''.The hardliners apprehend that Geelani, if allowed to go to Pakistan, will marginalise the other leaders in the group, may rubbish the ceasefire and speak a language that could be embarrassing for the PM. They are also averse to the government putting all its eggs in the Hurriyat basket. After all, there are other groups with which it should open dialogue. They also feel that the ceasefire is only giving the militants time to regroup, and that Pakistan needs to make more concessions than it has done so far.The other view is that the five leaders should be allowed to go, and prevail upon the militants on the other side of the border to give peace a chance, that Geelani cannot say more than what he has stated here. On the other hand, he has credibility with the fundamentalist groups in Pakistan. PDP leader and former Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed goes to the extent of saying that any move to deny a passport to Geelani, which would abort the expedition, would be ``disastrous'' for the peace process. Given the raised expectations of the Kashmiri people, who are acquiring a stake in peace in the state, it could put the clock back and could even lead to a ``new war'' in Kashmir.Much significance is being attached to the statement by Army Chief S. Padmanabhan last week, making a case for an extension of the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir beyond January 26. He had argued that the benefits of the ceasefire far outstripped any negative fallout it might have had. Political circles feel that Padmanabhan would not have made such a statement without a clearance from the top and they are meant to signal a message to the hardliners about the prevalence of a certain kind of a mood in the armed forces. The army chief also said that the forces should not be involved in counter insurgency operations as far as possible.
