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Ministry officials here, however, claim that Mirwaiz had begun to see reason in moderation since after his passport was revoked.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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