J&K separatists
Basit meets Geelani, Malik, Mirwaiz; Cong says govt decision knee-jerk
NEW DELHI: Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit continued to meet Kashmiri separatists on Tuesday, a day after an angry Modi government called off talks within minutes of him meeting a senior Hurriyat leader in defiance of an Indian warning.
Three Hurriyat Conference leaders called on Basit in the Capital, while in Islamabad, his country’s foreign office said Pakistan was “not subservient” to New Delhi and Kashmir was not a part of India.
In an unprecedented move, India had, on Monday, called off foreign secretary-level talks scheduled for August 25 in Islamabad, after Basit met Shabir Shah. Foreign secretary Sujatha Singh had called up the high commissioner, asking him not to meet the separatists but Basit chose to go ahead with the meetings.
The first Hurriyat visitor at the Pakistan mission Tuesday was 84-year-old hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani who spent almost two hours with Basit.
After the meeting, Geelani With separatists squarely blaming Cong for Modi govt’s move to call off secretary level talks with Pak, the BJP appears to have wrested advantage in poll-bound J&K.
said Kashmir was a fundamental issue and without the participation of Kashmiris, no lasting solution could be found. The decision to call off the talks was childish, the hawk, once a votary of Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan, told reporters at the airport earlier in the day.
“Kashmir is an internationally recognised issue and this ground reality cannot be changed...,” Basit told Geelani, according to Hurriyat spokesman Ayaz Akbar.