April 03, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1429

LAHORE, April 2: A prominent leader of the Indian-administered Kashmir on Wednesday proposed a regional council to find out means for a lasting peace in the troubled region before a final solution could be arrived at.

The proposal was made by Mehbooba Mufti, a leader of People’s Democratic Party, a partner in the Congress-led ruling coalition in the Indian-administered Kashmir.

Delivering a lecture on ‘Indo-Pak Relations and the Kashmir Issue’, she said regional council members could be elected from all parts of Jammu and Kashmir -- whether under Pakistani or Indian control.

“Elections for them can be held under the constitutions of respective parts they come from, without having to abandon their existing territorial loyalties,” she told a gathering of intellectuals, peace activists, and mediapersons at the South Asia Media Centre, the headquarters of the South Asian Free Media Association.

She said: “Our people have suffered so much that they should not be made to live in the situation of perpetual conflict. We have lost 100,000 young men to violence and still we are far from arriving at a solution to the Kashmir issue. People in Jammu and Kashmir need peace and jobs before they can exercise their right to choose between India and Pakistan or opt to go their way.”

Mehbooba, who met PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday and is set to see PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif on Thursday (today), said she hoped that the new government in Pakistan would carry forward the ongoing process of normalization in Kashmir.

“I have talked to (Indian) Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) on how to move forward from the recommendations already given by various consultative groups formed by him for the resolution of the Kashmir issue and why the progress is so slow on them.

The prime minister responded that he was waiting for the new government to take over. With this process is now over, I hope there will be visible movement on a number of fronts,” she said.

Mehbooba desired a speedy improvement in people-to-people contact and movements across Kashmir and a high-level of commerce and business activity among various parts of the strife-ridden region.

“If there is a peace in Kashmir, its strategic location will turn it into a corridor for trade between South Asia, Central Asia and China,” she said.

In the discourse on Kashmir, she said: “we often talk about three dimensions to the issue -- Pakistan and Kashmir, India and Kashmir and India and Pakistan, but we never hear the internal dimension. There is a huge difference of opinion among the people living in three distinct areas within the (Indian-administered) Kashmir -- Ladakh, Valley and Jammu.”

She opposed any solution which revolved around dividing the region on territorial or communal basis.

Mehbooba highlighted the fact that no single actor had a final solution because of diversity of political, communal and territorial opinion on the issue. "All the parties have proposals but none of them has the solution," she said.

Speaking on the occasion, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) chairperson Asma Jehangir said Kashmiris on both sides of the border were unhappy with Delhi and Islamabad.

The two sides needed to discuss the issue without the feeling of mutual distrust, said Asma, who had recently visited Srinagar as the UN Rapporteur on human rights violations.

SAFMA Secretary-General Imtiaz Alam said he hoped that the new government lifted all curbs on people-to-people movement between the two parts of Kashmir as well as between India and Pakistan.