Mirwaiz rejects Jethmalani’s claim on Kashmir settlement

Srinagar: Stating that it had always maintained the disputed nature of Kashmir and a need for the “final solution” of the issue through dialogue between India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri people, the Mirwaiz Umar Farooq –led Hurriyat Conference Monday rejected BJP leader and senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani’s claim that his led Kashmir Committee had reached a written agreement with the Hurriyat leaders on “five important issues.”

“Although Kashmir Committee was active on a non-governmental level and we discussed the then Pakistani President, Pervez Musharaf’s four-point formula, it is absolutely incorrect to say we had reached any sort of written agreement with the Kashmir committee,” a spokesman of the amalgam said here.

Pertinently, Jethmalanai while accusing the Congress of sabotaging a solution of the Kashmir issue when he was heading the Kashmir Committee had told a New Delhi based newspaper recently that “….we had practically reached a solution. We had a written agreement with the Hurriyat leaders on five important issues, knowing full well that they were talking to us with the full knowledge and consent of Pakistan.

The main points are —violence and terror were to be totally outlawed; the solution must be acceptable to all parties and sections, which mean it included people of Ladakh and Jammu. Extremist positions like scrapping of Article 370 of the Constitution and the demand for secession were to be abandoned by both sides, displaced Pandits have to be rehabilitated with full honour and dignity and that the new dispensation will be a democracy of equal rights, which meant it would be a secular state.”