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“Pakistan government should take peace process forward”

ISLAMABAD: National Conference president Omar Abdullah said on Sunday that Kashmiris were hoping that Pakistan’s new coalition government would “seamlessly” continue the peace process with India and take it forward.

“Our expectation is that they will show with not just words, but deeds, that the peace process has been institutionalised in the way Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did when he took over after Atal Bihari Vajpayee,” Mr. Abdullah, who is in the Pakistan capital to attend a conference on regional peace and stability, told The Hindu.

Reacting to PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari’s statement that the Kashmir issue could be put on a backburner, and left for future generations to solve, Mr. Abdullah said “there are no takers on the ground in Jammu and Kashmir” for this idea.

“To believe that a future generation will be better equipped than the present one to solve the issue is a dangerous gamble that no one in Jammu and Kashmir wants to take,” he said.

Mr. Abdullah said it was on account of the negative reactions to the statement that Mr. Zardari had now revised his position.

The National Conference leader described as “reassuring” the positive sentiments expressed by the major coalition partners – the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) – on the peace process.

“Now we are looking forward to these sentiments being converted into concrete steps,” he said.

Mr. Abdullah also expressed regret that India did not respond “in quite as timely a fashion as we should have” on the peace process when President Pervez Musharraf was in charge. By the time progress had been made through backchannel diplomacy, he said, Islamabad pulled back citing the political upheaval in the country, and the peace process was “mothballed.”

Mr. Abdullah said India had lost an opportunity as President Musharraf was the country’s all-in-all, and it was easier to deal with a single power centre than with several.

He said there were “questions” about the new political situation in Pakistan and how it would impact the peace process.

But he said in this respect, it was reassuring to see Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani getting a unanimous vote of confidence. He said it would be unreal to expect any major breakthrough in the peace process as the new government in Pakistan settles down, while India goes into election mode, first with assembly elections in six States, including Jammu and Kashmir, and the general elections following soon.

Even so, he urged the two governments to show “some sort of sign immediately that the peace process is being restored, revived, that it is a priority.”

Mr. Abdullah said the countries could re-examine some of the Kashmir-specific confidence-building measures and correct the “flaws.” As an example, he cited the Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service. “That bus has remained a symbolic gesture. What was supposed to be a means of uniting people has become a source of disillusionment and disappointment,” he said, pointing to the lengthy forms that people had to fill and the three-year wait for a clearance to travel from the intelligence agencies on both sides.

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