NEW DELHI: The Labour Party favoured a greater role for the people of Kashmir in the ongoing peace process between India and Pakistan and hoped the two countries would privately work to demilitarise both sides of the Line of Control (LoC).

This view was expressed by Richard Howitt, member of the European Parliament for the Labour Party, at a press conference here at the end of a nine-day visit to both sides of the LoC to study the Kashmir dispute. The European Parliament is compiling a report on Kashmir.

Amendments

The Labour Party sought 54 amendments to the report, including changing the "unparliamentary and inflammatory" language that could damage the peace process and dropping a paragraph that suggested "plebiscite" since it was not in the European Parliament's mandate.

"The European Union strongly believes that the dispute is best resolved bilaterally," he said in his capacity as the Labour Party's Foreign Affairs spokesperson and vice-chair of the European Parliament's Human Rights Committee.

"Much hype"

During his visit, Mr. Howitt said he had realised there was much hype about the peace process. The two Governments must accord absolute priority to people on both sides of the LoC while proposing confidence-building measures and the international community had a role in promoting people-to-people contacts.

The European Parliament would meet in a few weeks to ensure that the final Kashmir report was "fair and balanced." During discussions, the Labour Party would point out that the draft report gave inadequate importance to the peace process.

Rights abuse

On human rights violations, Mr. Howitt said the European Union was against all kinds of rights abuse, irrespective of who the perpetrators were. He met the victims of such violence, the Kashmiri Pandits, relatives of missing people and lawyers fighting cases of human rights violations perpetrated by the security forces.

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