Reacting strongly to the recent statement of former Chief Minister and working president of National Conference Omar Abdullah that the Line of Control (LOC) in Jammu and Kashmir should be turned into international border, Hurriyat (M) Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq termed Abdullah’s statement as naïve and contrary to the political, geographical and historical realities connected with the Kashmir issue.Hurriyat (M) spokesman in a statement issued to GNS said the people of Kashmir have never accepted LOC as an international boundary, adding, if they would have done so, this issue would have been solved way back.The spokesman said the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which comprises of regions including Valley, Jammu, Ladakh, Gilgit Baltistan and other areas is an internationally recognized disputed territory. He said that UN resolutions provide legal basis to the dispute.
The spokesman said, in the past also several quarters had advanced the idea of status quo but the fact remains that India has occupied a large part of the territory against the will of the people. He further said that both India and Pakistan have so far failed to secure a solution bilaterally in spite of several rounds of talks and agreements between the two countries. He said, thus the inclusion of Kashmiris in any talks to resolve Kashmir dispute becomes inevitable to make them fruitful and result oriented. The spokesman said that Kashmir was not a territorial or border dispute but it involved the settlement of political future of more than 15 million human beings, thus, it has been a long held stand of Hurriyat that Kashmiris were the main stake holders to the Kashmir dispute. Hurriyat has always maintained that oppression and use of brutal force was not going to work and solution could only be found through a meaningful dialogue between the main stake holders to the issue including India, Pakistan and Kashmiris.
The spokesman said Hurriyat had always wished that LOC should be made more permeable so that there is robust trade and cultural exchanges between the people of divided parts of Jammu and Kashmir till the lasting and mutually agreed solution to the dispute was found on permanent basis. The spokesman said that to find a durable and permanent resolution to Kashmir dispute, Hurriyat considers the involvement of third party very reasonable because bilateral efforts in the past 68 years have miserably failed to yield any solution to the festering dispute on the globe.Meanwhile, the programme of Mirwaiz Dr Molvi Muhammad Umar Farooq to address Friday congregation on April 17 at Budgam has been postponed, he would routine address the gathering at historic Jamia Masjid Srinagar.The spokesman has expressed his extreme concern and regret over the incident of fire break out in which more than a dozen of shops and houses in Safakadal were gutted. (GNS)