PM sent SOS to Farooq’s friends

NEW DELHI, JULY 14: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called up Kuldip Nayyar, MP, at 11 at night last week, urging him to talk to Faroo...

NEW DELHI, JULY 14: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called up Kuldip Nayyar, MP, at 11 at night last week, urging him to talk to Farooq Abdullah and prevail upon him not to do any thing precipitous. He also spoke to L.M. Singhvi on the telephone. Both MPs were in Srinagar as part of the 24-member Standing Committee of Parliament on Home Affairs. Both Nayyar and Singhvi met Farooq.

So did MDMK leader Vaiko, whose services were also utilised by Vajpayee. It was at Vaiko’s invitation that Farooq had gone to Erode two weeks ago. Vaiko went to Srinagar, and spoke to Abdullah as one regional ally to another.

Keen to make amends with Farooq Abdullah after the Union Cabinet had rejected the autonomy resolution sent by the state assembly of Jammu and Kashmir, the Prime Minister sent SOS to various people who could have an influence on Abdullah.

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The Centre was optimistic about a dialogue with the National Conference after Farooq’s statement today that he would come to Delhi on July 17th for talks, and with Law Minister P.L. Handoo declaring yesterday that the NC was not insisting on the pre-1953 position.

Vajpayee is also keen simultaneously to engage the Hurriyat in talks, and the meeting of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed with the Prime Minister today is one more straw in the wind. Mufti has been in close touch with the Hurriyat leaders and has for sometime been advocating a dialogue with them.

R.K. Mishra, of the Observer group, is just back from the Valley, talking to Hurriyat leaders and briefed the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, Brajesh Mishra, yesterday.

Though the Hurriyat leaders have dismissed Farooq’s demand for greater autonomy as a “non-issue”, Abdullah’s autonomy card has in many ways queered the pitch for the Hurriyat-Government talks. It is no secret that the Government had through emissaries established informal contact with Hurriyat leaders with a view to bringing them to the negotiating table.

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The Prime Minister would like to set into motion a process towards a dialogue before he goes to New York in early September for the UN millennium session and then to Washington where he is expected to meet President Bill Clinton.

Besides the NC-Hurriyat conundrum that the Government has got caught in, there is a third dimension to a dialogue in Kashmir. That is the growing pressure of international opinion. The G-8 Foreign Ministers have called upon for India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue to solve the Kashmir question.

Farooq Abdullah has been in touch with a number of regional parties, inside and outside the NDA, since the rejection of his autonomy resolution with a view to mobilising political support for his case. The Prime Minister quickly seized the opportunity of Begum Akbar Jehan’s funeral to make a peace offering to his Kashmiri ally, aware of the pressure that was beginning to mount from some of the regional players within the NDA to open dialogue with Farooq.

Police personnel seen to control the situation during a massive protest over the statehood demand and the inclusion of Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule, in Leh on Wednesday. (ANI Video Grab)

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