The long awaited process of dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir was set in motion on Wednesday with the Centre's interlocutor N N Vohra having wide ranging discussions with Governor G C Saxena and several other important government functionaries in Jammu.
When asked if the All Parties Hurriyat Conference is on his agenda for dialogue, he said the prime minister and deputy prime minister had said in Parliament that he will be meeting everyone. "At what stage who comes forward, it is for them [Hurriyat] to make up their mind," he said.
In the first phase, Vohra said he would meet important people in the legislature and based on the discussion with them will draw up future programme for talks.
He said that his first visit to the state is to establish preliminary contact with important personalities with whom he would be working in the near future.
Immediately after arrival, Vohra held a wide-ranging discussion with the governor on the situation in the state.
He also met Deputy Chief Minister Mangat Ram Sharma. "The meeting was brief but fruitful," Sharma said after the meeting which lasted 35 minutes.
Meanwhile, in the backdrop of a suggestion by Bill Clinton that the Irish model be followed to resolve the Kashmir issue, the Hurriyat Conference is planning to send a letter to the former United States president requesting him to be a mediator.
Hurriyat sources said after a meeting of its executive committee that this would be part of the 24-party conglomerate's major diplomatic exercise to press for a dialogue on the Kashmir issue.
A two-member team, comprising former chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Mohammad Yaseen Malik, was formed at the meeting which will visit Delhi on Saturday to meet ambassadors and high commissioners of different countries to press their demand for an early resolution of Kashmir issue.
