Decks cleared for APHC leaders' travel to Pak.

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, DEC. 28. In a move intended to lift the ``peace initiative'' to a higher level of engagement, the Vajpayee Government is believed to have decided to let the All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leaders travel to Pakistan, where they are likely to have a dialogue with the ``boys'' on how to sustain the peace process. For now, four Hurriyat leaders are to be granted travel documents.

Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat, Mr. Yaseen Malik, Mr. Abdul Gani Lone, and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq are likely to travel to Pakistan on January 15, in accordance with a resolution passed by the APHC executive on December 17. Of these, the Mirwaiz already has a passport, while Mr. Lone has a Pakistan-specific three- month travel document which would be extended; Mr. Malik's application for a passport, made last September on medical grounds, is being processed while Prof. Bhat's application is awaited. Only Syed Ali Shah Geelani has not made a request for passport, and none is likely to be given to him in the absence of such an application.

However, it has been made clear that as far as the Government of India is concerned, the Hurriyat leaders get the travel documents to go out of India and they are free to visit any country of their choice. In other words, they would be travelling as private citizens, not entrusted with any official brief or assignment. These leaders would not even be able to claim that they were visiting Pakistan as Hurriyat representatives.

The Hurriyat executive is likely to meet in the first week of January next, when the conglomeration will be in a position to finesse its ``travel to Pakistan strategy''. It is believed that the overwhelming majority within the Hurriyat is in favour of giving peace a chance, and the message they are likely to take to Pakistan is to tell the ``boys'' that the gun has not worked, let us test the efficacy of the dialogue.

The Centre's thinking is predicated on an assessment that the Prime Minister's peace initiative has created a constituency for peace in the valley, and that the APHC leadership would find it difficult to ignore this sentiment. The Centre also believes that the Hurriyat leaders have no choice but to convey this popular sentiment to the strategists and Generals in Pakistan.

The Centre has, by default, made it clear that it does not subscribe to the Hurriyat's claims, often repeated by Pakistan, of being ``the sole representative of the Kashmiri people''. In the last few days, for example, the Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, has asserted that the Centre would also be talking to the National Conference as well as other political groups and voices in Jammu and Kashmir.

At the same time, the Centre is aware of the international community's preference for starting some kind of communication with the Hurriyat leadership. Informal contacts between the Centre's emissaries and the Hurriyat leadership have already been established, and it is possible that the formal dialogue could begin once these leaders come back from Pakistan after discovering the mood there.

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