Govt names exIB chief interlocutor for Kashmir

SUSTAINED DIALOGUE Will ‘talk to everybody’ to ensure peace, says Sharma

NEW DELHI: A former head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency will lead talks to end the nearly three-decade-long insurgency in Kashmir, the government announced on Monday.

Home minister Rajnath Singh said Dineshwar Sharma, 63, who retired as the Intelligence Bureau director in December, will speak to “all stakeholders”, as well as decide on whether to talk to the hardline separatist group, the Hurriyat Conference.

“For a substantive dialogue, I will need to talk to everybody,’’ Sharma said. “Peace must be restored in Kashmir and for that I will talk to all people in an effort to bring about a solution.”

The talks offer stems from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last Independence Day outreach to troubled Kashmir. Modi had said the region’s problems could be solved by embracing its people rather than resorting to abuse or bullets.

Modi’s comments were seen as a possible shift in his policy towards Kashmir, where the government has been pursuing a tough line against a surge in violence that has killed about 100 people over the past year.

Sharma said he will visit Kashmir in about a week. A 1979 batch IPS officer once posted as a CRPF inspector general in Kashmir, Sharma will submit a report to the government, although no deadline has been given for this. Several government officials said Monday’s announcement was preceded by “a lot of homework”, including informal talks with separatists.

The officials added that Sharma was called in for a meeting attended by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Singh on Monday.

Monday’s announcement is the latest in a series of efforts to end an insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people since violence broke out in the region in 1989.

Past efforts at peace have yielded little. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government was the first to hold talks with Kashmiri separatists in 2004 but the effort fizzled out after his government was voted out of power.

In 2010, PM Manmohan Singh renewed those efforts, setting set up a panel of interlocutors to speak to various stakeholders, including the Hurriyat leaders.