Chairman of separatist Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. (Photo: X)
Srinagar: Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric and chairman of separatist Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Saturday urged India and Pakistan to seize the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, scheduled to take place in Islamabad on 15-16 October, to break the ice in their strained relations and instead of rehashing the past move forward.
“India and Pakistan have a real opportunity at the upcoming SCO Summit to break the ice and engage constructively. Hope they heed to it,” he said in a post on ‘X’ on Saturday. The 51-year-old cleric and politician has returned to ‘X’ which was known as Twitter when he had posted on it the last time on August 4, 2019, a day before Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its special status and split up into two Union territories.
In his first post after 62 long months, the Mirwaiz said he is returning to this platform with the hope of peace and justice for the people of J&K. He said, “After more than 5 years, mostly spent under house detention, when J&K, in the August of 2019, went through the rude shock and humiliation of losing its semi-autonomous status, was broken into two parts, downgraded to a union territory followed by a no-holds-barred clampdown and communication blackout, I return to this platform with the same hope of peace and justice for the people of Jammu & Kashmir that I have always desired”.
He asserted, “Despite increased challenges, the resolve for peaceful resolution of the conflict remains stronger than ever. Generations of Kashmiris have been consumed by the uncertainty”. He added, “We want an end to it, a fair closure. India and Pakistan have a real opportunity at the upcoming SCO Summit to break the ice and engage constructively. Hope they heed to it”.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan for the summit of Eurasian leaders. This would be the first high-level visit from India to Pakistan since 2015. The last visit by an Indian foreign minister to Pakistan was in December 2015, when the then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended the ‘Heart of Asia’ conference on Afghanistan in Islamabad.
Though some India-Pakistan watchers see in his visit as an opportunity to ease tensions between the two South Asian neighbours, Mr. Jaishankar said on Saturday that he is not going to Islamabad to discuss India-Pakistan relations, but his visit is all about the multilateral event, which is the SCO Summit 2024, taking place in Islamabad.
“Yes, I am scheduled to go to Pakistan in the middle of this month and that is for the meeting of the SCO –the heads of government meeting. I expect that there would be a lot of media interest because the very nature of the relationship is such and I think we will deal with it. But I do want to say it will be there for a multilateral event, I mean I am not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I am going there to be a good member of the SCO. Since I am a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly,” he said while delivering the Sardar Patel Lecture on Governance organized by IC Centre for Governance in New Delhi.
India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are the member countries of the SCO, established in 2001. The organisation promotes political, economic, and security cooperation in the region.
( Source : Deccan Chronicle )
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