MIRPUR: (Parliament Times) History was made at world’s prestigious United States’ Harvard University on February 15th, 2017 – Wednesday when for the first time, leaders from India, Pakistan and Kashmir discussed the Kashmir issue at the India Conference at Harvard, says a message reaching here on Thursday.
The broad-based tripartite discussion among seasoned political elite from Pakistan, India and Kashmir strongly suggested early amicable settlement of Kashmir issue equally acceptable to the stake-holders especially the people of Jammu & Kashmir, it added.
Air Vice (Retd) Marshal Kapil Kak (India), Omar Abdullah (occupied Kashmir), Senator Mushahid Hussain (Pakistan) and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (via video from the Kashmir Valley) engaged in a dialogue about the core issues and pathways to resolution of this seventy three year old conflict. It was also the first time in the history of the conference that a Pakistani guest was invited to address the India Conference. Senator Mushahid Hussain, who traveled for the event immediately after the death of his mother-in-law in Pakistan, received a warm response from a primarily Indian audience, the message said.
The panel was organized at the initiative of Ameya Kilara and Mehul Jain, two leadership fellows of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F.Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Their aim was to start a dialogue between the various stakeholders about how to break out of the long standing impasse that has impacted millions of lives and livelihoods in Kashmir and across the subcontinent. Despite differing views on the historical facts and contours of the problem, a consensus emerged among the speakers on the importance of resuming dialogue between India and Pakistan through official, back-channel and Track 2 diplomatic channels, according to the message released to the local media here Thursday morning
Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed from Pakistan stressed the importance of regional connectivity and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor to the way forward. He said, “Both Mr Sharif and Mr Modi who have an economic vision of the future for South Asia, they should agree on the resumption of a date for the SAARC Summit (which was scuttled by India last year) and in that context, Mr Modi can then visit Pakistan.†There was also broad agreement on the need to engage with all the relevant stakeholders, including the pro-freedom/separatist leaders and even militant organizations as recommended by the Yashwant Sinha-led Committee of Concerned Citizens of which Air Marshal Kapil Kak is a member.
Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, in a recorded video statement from Srinagar, said that the most democratic way of resolving the conflict would be through a referendum. He also said, “It is time to think about things, reach out politically, and find humane solutions. It is the responsibility of the leaders of India and Pakistan to understand this and to initiate steps for resolution.†Finally, recognizing the human impact of this conflict on ordinary people’s lives, the panel repeatedly stressed that the primary beneficiaries of any peace process need to be the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Omar Abdullah put it eloquently, “…for this problem to be resolved, we have to ensure that neither side is able to claim victory. If either India or Pakistan comes out of the dialogue process being able to say that we have won at the cost of the other, this process will not deliver resultsâ€, he added, according to the message.
