Hurriyat faction calls Dulat claims mere lies

After hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the moderate faction of the Hurriyat too is training the gun on former R&AW chief AS Dulat. Geelani had asserted that Dulat's attribution to Hurriyat Conference in his book 'Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years' are "mere lies". Now the moderate Hurriyat has condemned the book as well.

"Former Research and Analysis Wing chief's claim that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf told Mirwaiz to contest Assembly elections is a lie. I was with the Mirwaiz in that meeting and I vividly remember that Musharraf said nothing like that," Hurriyat Conference spokesman Shahid-ul-Islam told Mail Today.

"Musharraf never discussed about participating in the elections. We only discussed the four point formula which we thought carried some weight. The four-point formula was only the starting point of a process towards the final solution for Kashmir," Shahid said. He also denied Dulat's claim that Mirwaiz agreed on status quo in Kashmir and termed it as an "absolute lie".

"The only reason we supported Musharraf's formula was that it would have abolished the status quo in Kashmir. So there is no question of endorsing it," he said, adding that one of the important elements of Musharraf's formula was the demilitarization of Kashmir. The Musharraf four-point formula advocated a phased withdrawal of troops by India and Pakistan; no changes in the border or the line of control; local self-governance and a joint supervision mechanism in J&K involving India, Pakistan and Kashmir. He described deliberation with Dulat as part of a dialogue process with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

"When we started a dialogue process with BJP, Dulat was an adviser on Kashmir and the middleman in conducting the talks. So it was imperative to talk to him on occasions," Shahid said. "The agenda of the whole process was to engage in a meaningful dialogue that would include both New Delhi and Islamabad to find the peaceful resolution of Kashmir problem."

Meanwhile, separatist leader Shabir Shah has been maintaining silence over Dulat's revelations. "I will read his book first and then I will talk about it. I cannot comment without reading whole book," Shabir Shah told Mail Today on phone. Former R&AW chief in his book claimed that separatist leader Shah was all set to become the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir in 1996 but missed the bus at the last moment. Dulat said he was in constant touch with Shah from his time in the jail, and had almost struck a deal to form a government in the 1996 elections.

"Sometimes I met him (Shabir) in jail, bringing along a bottle of Rooh Afza and a box of grapes, and sometimes I met him at a Jammu nursing home. I began to call him the Nelson Mandela of Kashmir and he liked to be known that way. We spoke of a settlement with India and that he could become chief minister or even prime minister in the way that Sheikh Saheb was in the period 1947-53," Dulat writes in the chapter 'Kashmir's Mandela or Delhi's Agent: Shabir Shah'.