(Top) Mirwaiz Farooq, Manmohan Singh

Srinagar, June 8: Moderate separatist Mirwaiz Umer Farooq has pushed the Kashmir wedge firmly on the Indo-Pak table, saying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s pet project in UPA II was doomed to failure unless New Delhi offered an “acceptable political solution to the people of Kashmir”.

Speaking exclusively to The Telegraph in the wake of the Prime Minister’s departure after a two-day trip, the Mirwaiz said, a shade sardonically: “It is good to learn that the Prime Minister is sending peace signals to Pakistan, but that would only work if he sent similar signals to Kashmiris as well. Peace between India and Pakistan cannot happen until there is an acceptable political solution for the people of Kashmir.”

The Mirwaiz, who heads the doves in Kashmir’s Hurriyat Conference, stressed that it was “critical” for Kashmiris to be “taken on board in any Indo-Pakistan dialogue”.

He said, again tongue tucked in cheek: “The Prime Minister has repeatedly said he is keen to walk the extra mile with Pakistan, it is pertinent he is not ready to do the same with Kashmiris. He sounds routine and unrealistic, he does not appear prepared to give us a chance.”

Asked what that chance could be, the Mirwaiz replied: “Well, we have said that any constructive dialogue on Kashmir has to involve all three parties, India, Pakistan and Kashmir. It may not be at the same time or at the same table, but it has to involve all three. Without that, there cannot be a way ahead.”

India and Pakistan are set to resume foreign minister-level talks in mid-July in a fresh attempt to build trust and secure peace in the subcontinent. New Delhi foregrounds the export of terror from Pakistan as its chief concern. Islamabad, like always, is unlikely to relegate Kashmir from its list of bilateral priorities.

The Mirwaiz’s moderates and the hardline Hurriyat faction led by S.A.R. Geelani have both spurned talks with New Delhi describing India’s approach as “unconstructive”.

The Mirwaiz saw nothing novel forthcoming in the Prime Minister’s renewed call for dialogue yesterday.

“He was just beating about the bush and being evasive all the time,” the Mirwaiz said. “The right conditions have to be first prepared on the ground if the government genuinely wants a solution.”

Spelling some of them out, the Hurriyat leader set conditions he himself knows are unlikely to be accepted: “For a start, Indian troops have to be withdrawn from the Valley, the AFSPSA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) has to be scrapped and all political prisoners released. That will be a beginning. The government should be ready to give us something to show to the people of Kashmir, something of trust, something of substance.”

To the Prime Minister’s own conditionality for talks --- eschewing terror and violence --- the Mirwaiz set forth a nuanced rejection. “Of course the solution has to be politically negotiated, there is no other way, and we in the Hurriyat strongly believe that,” he said. “But that does not mean that people who have adopted other methods should be left out. The government will have to talk to those wielding the gun today, they are Kashmiris, too. The talks must be unconditional and all inclusive.”

The Mirwaiz took a dim view of the Prime Minister’s Kashmir visit, saying he had arrived with “nothing to offer to the suffering and suppressed” people.

“We watched and heard him carefully,” the Mirwaiz said. “But we saw and heard nothing new. He was speaking in the most general and uninspiring tones. He was not even sharp or forthright in condemning human rights violations, he only gave routine assurances, as if his hands were tied. That was the most disappointing part, especially at a time when recent planned executions by the army have enraged sentiments.”

He recalled his last meeting with the Prime Minister in 2007 and said he appeared “more forthcoming and open” then.

“I think strong vested interests informed the Prime Minister’s mind today and that is not a good sign for a man who wishes to be a statesman,” the Mirwaiz said. “In our last meeting, the Prime Minister spoke of creating radical new openings in this part, of having breakfast in Srinagar and lunch in Muzaffarabad. That tone and mindset seems to have changed, a solution is being actively sabotaged.”

The separatist leader said the government had made “no serious effort” to build the atmosphere for talks ahead of the Prime Minister’s visit, and again turned the blame on “vested interests” in both Kashmir and New Delhi.

The same forces, he alleged, were responsible for the breakdown of backchannel negotiations with union home minister P. Chidambaram sometime back. “The issue is always the same: we begin to make some movement and then suddenly things reach a point where everything becomes suddenly unacceptable to us, sinister forces are at work, and we can see that the Prime Minister too is under their influence.”