No role for third party in Kashmir: Manmohan

Replying to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's letter, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said Pakistan violated an understanding with India by allowing Kashmiri separatist leaders to travel beyond PoK recently.

He has ruled out any third-party role as a "guarantor" on the Kashmir issue, an idea suggested by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and endorsed by the Hurriyat Conference.

The Prime Minister, however, denied his government had mishandled the Kashmiri separatist leaders' visit across the LoC.

"That Pakistan decided to invite them to visit Islamabad and other cities violated an "understan-ding" on the "procedures" rea-ched between the two countries for running the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service," Singh said in a letter sent yesterday.

"It would not be, therefore, correct to say the authorities on our side had mishandled the visit of the Hurriyat," Singh said, adding "passports were issued to those Hurriyat leaders who did not have them and had made a request for such documents."

Asserting the UPA government's endeavour to fully safeguard the country's vital interests while carrying forward the dialogue process with Pakistan, the Prime Minister made it clear that "there can be no redrawing of boundaries".

He said India had consistently held that the dialogue with Pakistan was predicated on its commitment to end cross-border terrorism, as outlined in the joint statement of January 6, 2004.

"The centrality of this position was recently reflected in the joint statement released after my meeting with Musharraf," he said.

"Nothing in our actions in the last twelve months has compromised our adherence to this principle," he said.

The BJP however, did not appear to be satisfied with Singh's answer. Former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said, "The bedrock of any comprehensive and composite dialogue is trust, and by allowing the Hurriyat leaders to travel beyond Muzzaffarabad, Pakistan has violated India's trust. We want to know what the Indian government has done in this regard, or plans to do."