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Talk, but cede no land, parties tell PM

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

The opposition parties have given Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee the green signal for his summit with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan at Agra.

But they have told him that not an inch of Indian territory can be ceded, nor should the government agree to tripartite talks on Jammu & Kashmir involving the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference.

The opposition parties also told the government that they would boycott the Pakistani high commission's high tea in honour of President Musharraf if the Hurriyat Conference was invited.

Manmohan Singh of the Congress, Mulayam Singh Yadav (Samajwadi Party), Somnath Chatterjee (Communist Party of India, Marxist), Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (Rashtriya Janata Dal) and others told reporters after the three-hour all-parties meeting that they had given Vajpayee the mandate to go ahead with the summit.

"We have told the prime minister that Kashmir should not be the core issue of the talks. The process of dialogue should continue," Chatterjee said.

Manmohan Singh said Congress president Sonia Gandhi told the meeting that the government should hold a "composite dialogue" with Pakistan based on the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration. She also told the prime minister that the Hurriyat has no place in the dialogue.

Mulayam Singh, former defence minister, said his party made it clear that the government should not give an inch of land to Pakistan. "Kashmir should not be the core issue," he said. "We want a dialogue with Pakistan on Kashmir, but there is no place for the Hurriyat Conference in this process."

"We have also asked the government to take up the issue of the release of the POWs of the 1971 war on a priority basis," Yadav said. "We released over 90,000 of their soldiers, but our 54 officers are still languishing in Pakistani jails."

Raghuvansh Prasad Singh of the RJD asked if there was a hidden agenda in the talks. "We wanted to know the composition of the team that will come from Pakistan," he said. "It seems the government still does not know about the team that will accompany the president."

Singh also told the prime minister that if the Hurriyat leaders were invited to the high tea organised by the high commission, the entire opposition would not attend.

Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said his party too did not want an inch of land to be given to Pakistan. "We have also taken up the issue of the release of the prisoners of war of 1971," he said.

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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