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Jehad Council for tripartite talks

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD April 20. The United Jehad Council (UJC), an umbrella organisation of various outfits engaged in militant operations in Kashmir, has expressed disappointment over the conditional peace offer made by Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The UJC reference is to the statement made by the Prime Minister that end of cross border infiltration and closure of alleged militant training camps in Pakistan must precede any talks. UJC insists that there was no `cross border infiltration' as Kashmir was a `disputed territory' and what was going on in Kashmir was `indigenous'.

In a statement issued in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pak Occupied Kashmir (PoK), the UJC chairman and chief of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Syed Salahuddin said the phraseology of Mr. Vajpayee did not indicate seriousness on the part of India to resolve the Kashmir issue.

``Still we welcome the offer and hope that it would lead somewhere'', the Hizb spokesman, Salim Hashmi quoted Mr. Salahuddin as saying.

Earlier on the basis of the Friday statement of Mr. Vajpayee, UJC had given a guarded welcome to the offer for talks.

It stressed that the dialogue should be ``meaningful and tripartite.''

``Though Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee's announcement for talks on Kashmir seems to be a welcome move, it is essential that the talks turn out to be meaningful,'' Mr. Salahuddin said.

``Meaningful talks could only be held when all the three parties, including the basic party, sat across the negotiating table,'' he said, referring to India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris. Kashmir was neither a border nor territorial dispute that India and Pakistan should sit together to resolve nor an internal matter that India and the Kashmiris should resolve through mutual parleys, he argued.

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