Ready to engage with Centre: Mirwaiz Umar

Srinagar, Oct 25: Hurriyat Conference Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq Friday said the separatist amalgam was ready to enter into dialogue with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government for the resolution of the “Kashmir issue”.

Addressing the Friday congregation at Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, the Mirwaiz talked about the changed situation of the past five years within Jammu and Kashmir and the effects of the rapidly changing geopolitical scenario on it.

He recalled that when the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) was formed by the leadership in 1993, the situation was entirely different and militancy was at its peak.

“Even at that time, APHC in its proclamation clearly stated that it advocates a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir conflict by engagement, and even after 30 years, this outlook remains the same,” the Mirwaiz said.

He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself at the BRICS summit also spoke about dialogue and diplomacy as the means for settling conflicts and not war.

The Mirwaiz said that Hurriyat talked to former Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh to Pakistan President Parvez Musharraf and was always ready to engage with the current dispensation in New Delhi.

“There has been too much bloodshed in Kashmir to allow it to continue,” he said.

“The recent killings in Gagangeer were shocking and disturbing and now we hear of killings in the high-security area of Gulmarg,” the Mirwaiz said. “These are very serious matters that can escalate and should be investigated.”

A local doctor and six non-local labourers were killed at a tunnel-construction site in the Gagangeer area of Ganderbal on Sunday, while the attack in the Butapathri area in north Kashmir's Baramulla district on Thursday left four persons, including two soldiers, dead.