PoK Ministers, MLAs scheduled to visit Kashmir

Omar urging Centre to permit Attique Khan’s motorcade to enter, ply in Valley

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Sep 10: During his current visit to New Delhi, where his key engagement was participation in National Integration Council meeting today, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is urging Government of India to lend all possible official facilitation to the high-profile PoK politician Sardar Attique Khan’s first visit to the Valley. If permitted to enter on Omar’s intervention, it will be first time after Partition that PoK’s politicians, including some sitting Ministers and MLAs, would be traveling in Valley in their own vehicles registered in Muzaffarabad and Rawalpindi.

Son of PoK’s topmost politician, Sardar Abdul Qayoom Khan, and a former ‘Prime Minister’ of ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’, Sardar Attique Khan is planning to visit Kashmir valley alongwith his son, Ibrahim, daughter-in-law, daughter and son-in-law, besides a number of former and sitting Ministers and legislators. Srinagar-based businessman, Zahoor Wattali, has invited Sardar Attique and others of his family and party, Muslim Conference, to participate in the marriage ceremony of his son Dar Yasir in Srinagar later this month. Those invited include another former Prime Minister of PoK Barrister Sultan Mehmood Choudhary.

Before Sardar Attique, his 90-year-old father and veteran politician, Sardar Abdul Qayoom, has also served as PoK’s Prime Minister and President for several terms. Both of them have attended almost all the international conferences sponsored by Government of Pakistan and overseas groups in USA, UK, Europe and other countries in the last 21 years of the Kashmir conflict. Attique Khan also used to be the key speaker at all the conferences organized by Kashmiri-American Council (KAC) founder-chief Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, who is now facing charges of being Pakistan’s and ISI’s agent without registration in USA.

Publicly abhorred by PoK’s pro-independence groups, including JKLF, Sardar Qayoom and Sardar Attique have been stanch supporters of PoK’s merger into Pakistan, though both have cold-shouldered Kashmiri radical politician Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s pro-Pakistan ideology and also publicly recognized Sheikh Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah as the “duly elected representatives” of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Informed sources revealed to Early Times that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah would be persuading Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, union Home Minister P Chidambaram, as well as Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi to grant special permission to Attique Khan and his entourage to visit Kashmir in their own cavalcade. Cross-LoC travel and trade on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad (and through Chakan da Bagh in Poonch) has been going on for the last few years but vehicles of one side are not allowed to ply beyond particular points on the LoC on the other side.

In case Omar succeeded in getting Attique Khan’s visit cleared without trans-shipment on LoC, it will be for the first time in the last 64 years that Pakistani vehicles, registered in Muzaffarabad, Mirpur and Rawalpindi, would be plying on the streets in Kashmir valley.

Previously, a number of pro-India politicians from J&K have visited PoK and Pakistan and vice versa but Track-II plans of arranging Muzaffarabad visit of NC and PDP leaders, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, through Srinagar-Muzaffarbad surface route had been scuttled when Hurriyat leaders, notably Geelani, registered their strong protests with Gen Pervez Musharaf’s government. It was in the face of this acrimony that New Delhi did not permit former Pakistani Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid’s visit to hometown Srinagar four years back.

Sardar Attique Khan confirmed to Srinagar-based news agency, KNS, today that he would be meeting Chief Minister Omar Abdullah during his forthcoming visit. “I will meet the elected Chief Minister Omar Abdullah during my visit. I have no problem in meeting him. I have sent list of 24 people to the J&K government who will accompany me during my visit”, Khan is reported to have told KNS.

“I want to come in my own vehicle and it will be a biggest Confidence Building Measure if I’m allowed. As former PM of AJK I want to become bridge between India and Pakistan,” Khan said and advocated creation of free trade and travel zone across the LoC.

“Whole Jammu and Kashmir should be declared as free trade zone and people of both parts should be allowed to travel without any documents,” he demanded. Six of Khan’s relatives and colleagues are reported to have already arrived in Srinagar.

Sources said that Sardar Attique and his entourage would be staying at a super-luxury hotel on Gupkar Road and they would be meeting with a number of pro-India Kashmiri politicians including Dr Farooq Abdullah, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Mehbooba Mufti, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, Ghulam Hassan Mir, Prof Saifuddin Soz. They were also scheduling meetings with senior separatist leaders, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Bilal Gani Lone (and his mainstream politician brother Sajjad Lone), JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik, Shabir Shah and Professor Abdul Gani Bhat.

“This is a golden opportunity for strengthening CBMs. I have sent the list received from other Kashmir to the Centre for permission. Tomorrow politicians from our side can also go there,” Omar Abdullah reportedly told KNS today. According to the agency, Omar added: “Though coming in his personal vehicle may not be possible, but still I will inform the central government and hope he will be given permission.” Asked to comment on Khan’s statement terming him as elected representative of people, Omar said, “If he endorses that we are elected representatives it is a welcome step.”

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