Ceasefire boosts parallel diplomacy

NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 23: Track II diplomacy on Jammu and Kashmir has gained momentum with the Government's unilateral ceasefire during Ramz...

NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 23: Track II diplomacy on Jammu and Kashmir has gained momentum with the Government’s unilateral ceasefire during Ramzan. In the next ten days, two important conferences are being held — one in Gurgaon near Delhi and the other in Kathmandu.

The obvious purpose of both meetings is to prepare the ground for the extension of the ceasefire beyond Ramzan and the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan, without which a dialogue cannot start between the two countries.

A Symposium, “Next Steps in Jammu and Kashmir: Give Peace a Chance,” on November 25 and 26 in Gurgaon is being organised by a Delhi-based organisation, Peace Initiatives, in conjunction with Lord Eric Avebury, a Liberal member of the House of Lords in Britain.

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Lord Avebury called on Home Minister L.K. Advani twice in recent weeks to apprise him about the conference and though no minister of the Government or its officials are participating, it seems to have the blessings of the Government.

The symposium on Kashmir this weekend is being attended among others by JKLF chairman Yasin Malik, Sardar Attique Ahmad Khan, son of the Prime Minister of PoK, Thupstan Chewang, chief executive councillor of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, and Mansoor Ijaz, who runs a powerful New York-based investment fund and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in the US.

Ijaz had reportedly facilitated communication between Parvez Musharraf and Atal Behari Vajpayee earlier this year and helped bring about the ceasefire in August. Ijaz is slated to deliver the keynote address at the weekend meet.

There are many expatriate Kashmiris coming for the meet and they include Nazir Geelani, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights in the UK, Shabir Choudhury, secretary general of the JKLF in the UK, Nazir-ul-Haq, who is involved with various think tanks in Britain. Kashmiri leader Shabir Shah, already in the Capital, may also attend.

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Director of Peace Initiatives, Karan Sawhney, said that their effort was to strengthen forces which seek the non-violent continuation of the political process in Kashmir, persuade groups operating from Pakistan to end violence and the Indian government to extend the ceasefire — and help India and Pakistan talk to each other.

Academics and media personalities from India and Pakistan will also take part in the two-day meet.

The other major initiative is the setting up of the Citizens’ Commission on South Asia which will have its first meeting in Kathmandu from December 1 to December 3. The Commission, to be modelled on the Brandt Commission in Europe, is headed by former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral and has members from all the SAARC countries. They include Amartya Sen and Manmohan Singh from India, Dr Kamal Hussain and Prof. Muhammad Younas in Bangladesh, Sartaj Aziz and Asma Jehangir in Pakistan and Dr Lal Jayawardena from Sri Lanka.

At a preparatory meet held today for the Kathamndu conference, Gujral drew a distinction between the process and institution of SAARC, and said, “It would be a mistake to allow the SAARC process to become a prisoner of Indo-Pak conflict.”