By Ahmed Adil
SRINAGAR, Indian-held Kashmir
Two weeks after high-level talks between India and Pakistan were called off over a row about Kashmiri involvement, a senior Kashmiri leader has praised Pakistan for its stance.
Pro-independence leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani wrote a letter to Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif praising him for not giving in to Indian demands for Pakistan not to consult with leaders from the Indian-held Kashmir.
“Mr. Geelani has sent a letter to appreciate PM Nawaz Shareef for the stance adopted by them during the NSA [National Security Adviser] talks,” Geelani's close aide Ayaz Akbar told Anadolu Agency on Friday.
In the letter Geelani said Pakistan had an important role to play in bringing international attention to Indian-held Kashmir, where India has a large military presence and has been accused of human rights violations.
“If Pakistan will show firmness over its recently-adopted principled stand, India will definitely stand answerable before the international community and it will remain with no other option except to leave its traditional rigid and stubborn policies,” said Geelani.
"Kashmir is not any border dispute between India and Pakistan but it is the issue of the future of more than 13 million alive people who are struggling for their basic and birth rights from the last six decades and they are the prime and principal party to the Kashmir dispute,” he said.
For the second time in a year, India and Pakistan suspended talks on August 23 because of India's objection to Pakistan consulting with Kashmiri leaders.
Pakistan said it had always invited Kashmiri leaders before any talks with India. In recent years it regularly used various international forums to raise the issue of Indian-held Kashmir.
This week Pakistan urged the U.N. to hold a plebiscite in Jammu & Kashmir over whether the state should remain part of India.
This marked a departure from the policy of a decade ago, under the regime of military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released this week.
"Pakistan would deliberately low-key the United Nations resolutions of the 1940s, as emphasizing them would not be helpful," revealed the cable, referring to U.N. resolutions calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full.
The two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- since they were partitioned in 1947, two of which were fought over Kashmir.
Since 1989, Kashmiri resistance groups in Indian-held Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.
More than 70,000 Kashmiris have been killed so far in the violence, most of them by Indian forces. India maintains over half a million soldiers in the Indian-held Kashmir.
A part of Kashmir is also held by China.
