FIRST PERSON---(3)

Fai attempted to buy Clinton’s support to Kashmir cause for $ 500,000

KAC chief an ordinary ‘political history sheeter’ in J&K, not a single FIR registered against him anywhere in state or country

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Jul 23: State Department’s coordinator of our programme, Cynthia Wilson, who was officially described as English Language Officer, had fixed our evening at a theatre in Washington D.C. Watching a stage show was part of our programme. Getting late at Luray Caverns, we had earlier in the day canceled the evening schedule when she called me on Fai’s phone. On our request, she booked another show which we finally enjoyed at the conclusion of our multi-state programme at a theatre at Times Square in New York City.

We were relieved due to cancellation of the show that gave us an opportunity to have a protracted interaction with Dr Fai at his office. Fai was impressed with our schedules that included meetings with senior officials on 6^th floor of the State Department---Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had her office on 7^th floor---,Chairman of United Nations Security Council at the UN headquarters in New York City, Congressmen at the Capitol Hill, besides celebrated thinktanks, including Michael Krepon, Stephen Cohen and Ambassador McDonald.

We observed that he was extraordinarily impressed with our prospective meeting with Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whose name was perhaps Senator Lugar. The meeting at Senate was, however, attended by the Chairman’s aide, Lisa Curtis, who had earlier met me and some of my colleagues in Srinagar when she worked at the US Embassy in New Delhi. We learned from Fai that Chairman of this particular committee in the Senate, who conducts Congressional hearings on sensitive foreign relations and policy issues, was more important on certain occasions than the Secretary of State.

One of the most interesting revelations that came from our host was about none other than former President Bill Clinton. Giving a description of his diplomatic operations, which are now most significant in view of the FBI charge of unauthorized foreign funding of the US election campaigns, Fai said that political corruption in USA was worse than in India and Pakistan.

Said he: “During the previous Presidential election campaign, Bill Clinton’s PR men contacted me to convey that the President would have a lunch or dinner with us (Kashmiri Americans). It was the best of news for me for over two decades. As I looked on my guest incredulously before confirmation, he was quick to unfold the condition. He wanted me to contribute USD 500,000 to Clinton’s campaign. I took it as a golden opportunity for the Kashmiris and thought that our Azadi was around the corner. After a great deal of labour, I could raise a maximum to $ 60,000. As I communicated to Clinton’s PR man, he tersely rejected it and fixed the President’s appointment with a more paying group”.

Even as most of our group, including me, had strong suspicions of Fai getting his finances from Pakistan, he maintained that Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora in Arab countries, Europe and USA was taking care of the KAC budget. FBI charge now says that even the lists of guest speakers and audiences in the high profile international Kashmir Conferences of Fai’s KAC had been coming in from the Pakistani Embassy in Washington D.C. These were all virulently anti-Indian assemblies which were attended by pro-Pakistan and pro-Azadi intellectuals including journalists, academics and government officials without any questioning from the agencies in Srinagar/Jammu and New Delhi. Latest of the series took place in Muzaffarabad in the end of May 2011.

On the day of Fai’s arrest by CBI earlier this week, Director General of Police, Kuldeep Khoda, issued a boisterous statement in Srinagar to claim that Government had “enough material and criminal cases pending” against the fugitive KAC chief. Three days of inquiries by Early Times discovered that there was just an ordinary “political history sheet” in Budgam district besides an unimplemented PSA warrant of year 1980 in Srinagar district against Fai.

 “There is not a single FIR against him at any Police Station in Jammu and Kashmir or elsewhere in the country”, a top-ranking Police official said with confidence. In other words, New Delhi’s latest “persona non-grata and agent provocateur”, Fai would have become a Police-guarded separatist leader, with the additional privilege of a bullet-proof car from the government, had he decided to return to Kashmir even after 30 years of worldwide anti-Indian campaign. Staying in the post-9/11 USA has led him to imprisonment of five years, if the charges against him were proved in Alexandria district court in Virginia by the FBI.

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