All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said the withdrawal of Indian troops from Occupied Jammu and Kashmir was the effective way to safeguard nearly two-year-old peace process from derailing or getting deadlocked.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Umar Farooq said the peace process couldn't evoke a sense of achievement amongst Kashmiris unless the sense of being trapped in a war zone went away.
Mirwaiz urged Indian leadership to set a time frame for troops' withdrawal so that peace process took a decisive and meaningful direction.
While hailing the recent agreement between India and Pakistan over setting up of relief points at certain places along LoC, Mirwaiz said people on both sides of the dividing line had been aspiring for reunion. And, he says those aspirations can not be addressed without making the LoC completely irrelevant with people on either side moving across at will. "In the aftermath of the deadly October 8 earthquake the public exchanges across this line (LoC) are all the more inevitable." Quoting the observation of a visiting delegation from European Union last year, Mirwaiz asserts that the people of Occupied Jammu and Kashmir have come a long way in their struggle for political rights and "can not be lulled into slumber."
"A sense of achievement could be instilled into Kashmiri psyche only when the existing sense of being trapped is erased from their traumatised subconscious. And that is possible only when the Indian troops are pulled back from the populated areas." Umar shudders while narrating his experiences in Uri town where he led special prayers on Eid.