A week after the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met in Islamabad, Pakistan’s High Commissioner Abdul Basit met Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani in New Delhi on Monday.
Sources told The Hindu that during the meeting that lasted about half-an-hour, Mr. Basit “briefed” Mr. Geelani on the foreign secretaries’ deliberations, and they discussed the “recent political developments in Jammu and Kashmir” as well.
Mr. Geelani and other separatist leaders, including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, are also expected to attend the Pakistan National Day reception, as they usually do, on March 23, for which the High Commissioner extended an invitation to Mr. Geelani. Confirming that the meeting was sought by the Pakistan High Commissioner, who called on the 85-year-old Hurriyat leader, Mr. Geelani told ANI that “dialogue between India and Pakistan is needed to resolve the Kashmir dispute.”
The meeting came on a day the government faced criticism in Parliament for changing its position on talks with the Hurriyat as well as the release of separatist leader Masarat Alam in Srinagar.
Significantly, this is the first time the High Commissioner is meeting Mr. Geelani since the government cancelled talks with Pakistan over their meeting last August. At that time the Ministry of External Affairs had said the meeting, that came just two days ahead of the scheduled Foreign Secretary talks, went against the “spirit of the Shimla Agreement and Lahore declaration,” that committed to bilateral talks over Jammu and Kashmir only. Diplomatic sources had also added that the essential problem was over the “sequencing” of talks.
This time around, when talks were held between the foreign secretaries on March 3 in Islamabad, the Pakistan High Commissioner did not meet separatists before the talks. Nevertheless, the High Commissioner’s meeting, coming even as the government faces criticism for backtracking on its policies on J&K because of its coalition with the PDP, has come under fire from Opposition leaders.
