Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Yasin Malik on Sunday sought a place on the dialogue table between India and Pakistan. He asked New Delhi to restore the credibility of institution of dialogue.
Speaking after a function here to release a book on JKLF founder Maqbool Butt, Mr. Malik said he was never against dialogue and believed that solutions came from this process only. But he asked how a solution could emerge without the participation of the basic party. India and Pakistan were holding talks without taking the people of Kashmir into confidence.
On the recently floated proposal of amnesty to militants returning from across the Line of Control, he said: “The surrender policy of the government may be a cause for dialogue between India and Pakistan, but to the Kashmiri people it is nothing but humiliation.”
Taking a dig at Pakistan, he quoted a recent statement by its Foreign Secretary in which he had termed the dialogue between the Kashmiri leadership and India as “treachery.” He said: “Then what will be this dialogue process called, if Kashmiris are kept away from it.”
“A must”
Mr. Malik said inclusion of the Kashmiri people in the dialogue process was a must, as they only had the right to decide their future.
The institution of dialogue had lost its credibility in Kashmir. “This needs to be restored.”
Paying tribute to Maqbool Butt, who was hanged in the Tihar Jail in 1984, Mr. Malik said: “He was not only a great leader but an ideology, which should be a source of inspiration for all Kashmiris.” “Bhat was romanticism, he was a dreamer, an ideology, who always thought that the Kashmiris should be left to decide their own future.”
“This is the reason he was termed double agent, as he dared to tell this to both India and Pakistan,” he said.
