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Sunday, Aug 06, 2006

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National

Azad rules out talks with militants

Shujaat Bukhari

No possibility of Nagaland-style talks

Ghulam Nabi Azad

SRINAGAR: Ruling out the possibility of holding Nagaland-style talks with militants in Kashmir, Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday evening told the Assembly that it was a completely different situation here as non-State actors were involved.

Speaking after a three-hour long debate on the security situation in the State, Mr. Azad said that if all those holding guns were only from the State, "I would tell my Deputy Chief Minister right now to initiate talks with militants to discuss a ceasefire but it is impossible because those with guns are from Pakistan, Afghanistan or from other countries having their own agenda."

"In Nagaland we are talking with our own people, but here the remote for their activities is somewhere else."

Mr. Azad said the hatred between the local and non-local militants was so intense "we had to separate them even in jails."

The Chief Minister asked legislators to discount the argument that the situation had not improved. "There is a discernible change when you compare it with previous years." Since 1999 there were 108 custodial disappearances and 323 deaths in custody.

In his eight months in office, there was a 17 per cent fall in overall militancy-related incidents, an 18 per cent decrease in civilian killings and a 55 per cent fall in IED explosions besides a two-third decrease in the killings of security and police forces.

The Hurriyat Conference did not continue its dialogue with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he pointed out. "The Hurriyat skipped the second roundtable in May in Srinagar even after all their four conditions were met" he said, adding that "they promised Dr. Singh that they will come back with solid proposals but they are yet to do that."

Reacting to a statement by the Opposition members that the roundtable was a family affair and had not borne fruit, he said, "On their (Hurriyat) request we reduced the crowd from 75 to 27, gave them three months time to prepare and made Srinagar the venue but at the last moment, they skipped the meet."

He said that this showed that they did not decide on their own but "got orders from somewhere else."

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