Amanullah Khan warns India, Pak against covert Kashmir agreement

Tariq Naqash
Muzaffarabad, Jan 08: Veteran separatist leader and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) patron, Amanullah Khan has said that any solution to Kashmir issue based on restricted and conditional right to self- determination will not be acceptable to Kashmiris.

Speaking at a news conference here on Friday, Khan said that Kashmiris will resist any solution envisaging permanent division of their motherland.
“Let it be clear to the governments in Islamabad and New Delhi that any agreement on Kashmir through surreptitious talks is unacceptable to Kashmiris living in any part of the divided region,” he said.
He alleged that “virtual conversion” of Gilgit-Baltistan into a province was negation of Pakistan’s traditional stance on Kashmir, its national interests, right to self-determination of Kashmiris and integration of state of Jammu and Kashmir.
“It was aimed at depriving people of these areas of those constitutional, political, financial and administrative rights which they could have been granted by giving them an AJK-like status,” the veteran leader said.
Khan, born in Astore (Gilgit), said people of Pakistan administered Kashmir (PaK) considered people of Gilgit-Baltistan as their brothers and wanted to see them enjoy maximum autonomy.
Replying to a question, he said, some sections of PaK’s interim constitution were equivalent to the “law of jungle” and needed to be repealed.
Similarly, he said, though the democratically elected forum in PaK was Legislative Assembly but maximum powers vested in the PaK Council which comprised mostly nominees or indirectly elected persons. Half of the PaK council members, including the chairman, were non-Kashmiris, he added.
The JKLF patron also criticized electoral process in PaK as “insult to democracy because it deprived supporters of independent Kashmir of their right to contest elections”.

SOURCE:http://www.risingkashmir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19793&Itemid=1