Centre not serious on resolving Kashmir issue: Hurriyat

On the eve of Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan, separatist Hurriyat Conference Wednesday accused the Centre of not being serious on resolving the Kashmir issue.

"On the one side, need is being stressed for confidence building in connection with the process of talks between India and Pakistan, but on the other, India is playing with the lives of teenaged boys in Kashmir which is neither in the interest of peace nor will it help resolution of Kashmir issue," a press statement released by the amalgam after a joint meeting of Executive and General Council said Wednesday.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao meets her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir for talks in Islamabad on Thursday.

Rao, the first senior Indian official to visit Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, and Bashir have been tasked by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani to find ways to bridge the trust deficit and prepare the ground for a meeting of the Foreign Ministers on July 15.

The Hurriyat meeting, which was presided over by the chairman of the Hurriyat Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, also discussed the present political situation, especially with regard to "unabated human rights violations and random arrests".

Terming the ongoing arrest of youths across the valley as "repetition of previous mistakes", the statement said the administrative step was an act of "negative thinking and could prove dangerous for the government".

First Published: Jun 23, 2010 19:30 IST