Hurriyat meet to decide on sending team to Pak

Hurriyat meet to decide on sending team to Pak
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, JAN 17: Hurriyat Conference today said a meeting of its executive committee would be called soon in Srinagar when it is likely to reconsider its decision to send a team to Pakistan in the wake of continued delay in issuing passports to three of the five delegates chosen by it.

Hurriyat insiders told PTI that an executive committee meeting would be called in the next few days when the response of the 23-party conglomerate to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's peace initiative would be discussed.

Hurriyat nominated five persons including firebrand Jamaat-e-Islamia leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, People's League chairman Sheikh Abdul Aziz, People's Conference supremo Abdul Gani Lone, noted Shia leader Maulana Abbas Ansari and former Hurriyat conference chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq for the Pakistani visit.

Barring Lone and Farooq, the other three leaders are without any travel documents.

The insiders, however, said the organisation was not threatening cancellation of the proposed visit and was, in fact, making its stand flexible to the maximum possible extent.

They said the meeting would be held soon after Geelnai and JKLF chairman Yaseen Malik returned to the valley.

Geelani, who is undergoing medical treatment in the capital, had visited the Pakistani high commission and discussed the present scenario in the state.

During the three-hour meeting, Geelani is reported to have conveyed to Pakistani high commissioner Qazi Ashraf Jehangir about his inability to visit Pakistan citing health reasons.

The reaction from Hurriyat Conference came close on the heels of the Centre reportedly putting the issue of travel documents on backburner in the wake of continued attacks by militants.

Yaseen Malik would also be returning to the valley, before flying to the United States and was likely to participate in the meeting.

In a related development, Lone met Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and had a three-hour closed door meeting with him. Though there was no word from either of the leaders, insiders said Lone is trying to create support for not going to Pakistan. The People's Conference leader has already been citing "cardiac problem" for not going to Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Home Minister L K Advani has said that only those `eligible' in the Hurriyat Conference delegation would get passports and told them bluntly that if they want to put that as precondition to visit Pakistan, "let them not go."

"Those who ought to get passports would get it and if it is their precondition that they would go to Pakistan only if all of them are issued passports, then let them not not go. That is their decision," he said in an interview to Hindi Weekly `Panchajanya', the RSS mouthpiece.

Stating that Government was adopting a firm attitude in various matters relating to the troubled state, he dismissed suggestions that the Government's preparedness for talks with the people of Jammu and Kashmir including militants was a sign of weakness.

He also made it clear that the Government was firmly against holding tripartite talks on Kashmir despite militants breaking off the earlier parleys on this issue. "There is no question of tripartite talks and that is the end of the matter".