The government has decided to take into confidence the leaders of Azad Jammu and Kashmir on the ongoing Pakistan-India dialogue process in the context of occupied Kashmir issue.
A meeting in this regard is being held on Monday, here at the Foreign Office, where Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, Secretary Riaz Khokhar and other officials will brief them on the dialogue process and progress made by the two countries on the occupied Kashmir issue.
AJK President Sardar Anwar, Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, Sardar Atiq, Farooq Rehmani and more than two dozen other political leaders have been invited to the meeting.
This is about the third time that the government will brief the Kashmiris on Pakistan's position on bilateral disputes including the occupied Kashmir issue, after the resumption of composite dialogue process early this year.
A Kashmiri leader told Business Recorder here on Sunday that it is a brilliant move of the government. He hailed the decision saying that most of the Kashmiri leaders were of the opinion that at least one representative of AJK must be included in the dialogues on occupied Kashmir.
Pleading not to be named, he said that occupied Kashmir is the core issue between Pakistan and India, but India is not willing to bring it to the top of the list. New Delhi must have to resolve the issue through political process, he maintained.
The leader added that a number of Kashmiri leaders were not satisfied with the talks between Pakistan and India without their representation. They are of the view that occupied Kashmir is not a bilateral issue of Pakistan and India, he said adding that Kashmiris living on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) must be part and parcel of any talks to be held at any level.
The meeting is believed to be crucial before the next month's visit of foreign ministry officials to India. The Kashmiri leaders would be informed about Pakistan's "unchanged" stance on occupied Kashmir.
So far, the two countries have not reach to a conclusion on any of the issues whether that be of LoC fencing or Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service.
The LoC fencing by India is being seen as big development in the sense that it has bifurcated the Kashmiris, somehow permanently.
"We call upon both Pakistan and India to include the Kashmiris in the dialogue process, as without their proper representation the exercise could be nothing, but, futility," the Kashmiri leader said.