Mufti can resolve Kashmir issue if he gets a free hand: Sharad

If given a "free hand" to run his government, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed will succeed in resolving the long pending Kashmir issue, Janata Dal(U) President Sharad Yadav today said.
Yadav, who met his former Janata Dal colleague Sayeed over lunch in Jammu yesterday, said that the PDP leader was a "nationalist who has lived for this country and would die for this country".
"I know Mufti Mohammed Sayeed personally for very long, he is a capable person and I am confident that if given a free hand to work, he would find a way out of this (Kashmir) problem," the JD(U) leader told PTI.

Yadav flew to Jammu from New Delhi yesterday on the invitation of Sayeed, whose party PDP is in alliance with BJP in Jammu and Kashmir, but said that he did not discuss politics during the meeting.
The meeting between the two leaders, who were both ministers in the Janata Dal government in 1989, came amid a unification move by Janata Parivar splinter groups.
"It was a long overdue meeting, so I decided that before Parliament session resumes, I must pay him a visit. We have been together in the Union cabinet and I know him very well. It was just an apolitical meeting where we discussed everything else except politics," Yadav said.

Yadav said that the "democratic setup of India" was a platform that provides solution to every long standing problem and that Kashmir issue too could be resolved within the framework of the democratic process.

He said he was confident that the BJP-PDP coalition government will facilitate and help initiate a sustained and meaningful dialogue with all internal stakeholders, which will include all political groups.
He said that the successive governments have been dealing with the separatist organisations.
"When I was a minister in the NDA government, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had initiated dialogue process with political groups, including the Hurriyat conference in the spirit of Insaaniyat, Kashmiriyat and Jamhooriyat," he said.