26 July 2003
HURRIYAT LEADER MIRWAIZ TO GET
BACK HIS PASSPORT
From Our Delhi Bureau
NEW
DELHI: Former All-Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) Chairman Mirwaiz
Umar Farooq may get back his passport soon as a reward for his "good
behaviour" and moderate utterances soothing to the Government
ears.
Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani is understood
to have dropped hints to this effect to senior lawyer-turned Rajya
Sabha member Ram Jethmalani, who is heading a committee trying to
resolve the Kashmir tangle as a private unofficial
attempt.
Jethmalani, alongwith the committee members who
include senior journalists, had called on Advani to plead for return
of the travel papers to Mirwaiz as it would give strength to the
moderate voice he has in the 23-party conglomeration of the Hurriyat
Conference.
The committee is to hold a meeting with the
Hurriyat Conference leaders in Delhi in the first week of August and
the role Mirwaiz plays in this meeting can make a difference. The
meeting is crucial as soon thereafter on June 9 Jethmalani will be
heading for Pakistan, where he is expected to confabulate with the
Pakistan-based Kashmiri leaders, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir leaders
and the militant commanders. He is visiting Pakistan as a part of the
delegation of Parliamentarians and journalists to attend a conference there.
Two Hurriyat leaders, who are
most powerful in their public appeal, are the young Mirwaiz and the
hawkish hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Passports of both were
seized in June last year. Return of the passport to Mirwaiz will be
seen as a special geture of the government which has steadfastly
refused to let Geelani go abroad for medical treatment.
The
passport of Mirwaiz was confiscated within days of his marriage in
Srinagar on June 9, 2002 with a US-born Kashmiri girl and tha had
sent the world crashing down for him as he was just set to go on
honeymoon in serene American and European surroundings. His frequent
jaunts to Dubai to fulfil his business interests were also
stymied.
Though the Government is trying to project Mirwaiz as
a sane voice in the Hurriyat conference, it is another matter that on
his home turf, where his moderate views can really make a difference,
he continues to pose as a "rabid communalist" in his weekly
Friday sermons from the pulpit of Jamia Masid in Srinagar.
The
Home Ministry officials here, however, claim that Mirwaiz had begun
to see reason in moderation since after his passport was revoked.
Fond of globe-trotting, he feels handicapped without the travel
papers.
They point out that the chastened young leader since
after revocation of his passport has begun to talk about autonomy and
is making very conciliatory noises quite appreciable to the Central
Government. His movements are, however, being watched closely and he
may get back the passport "if he maintains his newfound love for
peace and moderation," the officials say.
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