ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: There was little praise for recent opening of five crossing points on the Line of Control (LoC) at a discussion on Saturday where Azad Kashmir President Sardar Mohammad Anwar Khan and politicians of diverse views sought a central Kashmiri role in the India-Pakistan peace process.

An Azad Kashmir-born member of British parliament, Lord Nazir Ahmad, who also joined the discussion organised in Islamabad by the South Asian Free Media Association (Safma), even questioned the legitimacy of the dialogue without involving Kashmiris, calling it “the so-called India-Pakistan peace process”.

“We don’t agree with the present process,” said Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Amanullah Khan after Jammu and Kashmir People’s Party president Sardar Khalid Ibrahim saw an objectionable change in Pakistan’s stand in its proposals for self-governance and demilitarisation of the divided state.

President Anwar Khan said there had hardly been any “courtship” between the Kashmiri people — “though there might have been between troops” — through LoC crossing points opened earlier this month as he referred to what he called a romantic title of the discussion: “Courtship at Loc: Prospects and Challenges”.

The five points were opened on different dates starting on November 7 under an agreement between the two sides late last month to facilitate relief and movement of divided families across the LoC in the wake of the devastating October 8 earthquake, but there had been only a symbolic exchange of relief goods and clearance procedures allowed very little human movement.

The Azad Kashmir president said the earthquake disaster had brought Kashmiris more close to Pakistan with the realisation that they could get a meaningful help in a calamity only from Pakistan because of their geography.

He said then president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto could not be criticised for signing the 1972 Shimla peace agreement with India that called for only bilateral talks to settle the Kashmir dispute rather than U.N. resolutions because of the prevailing situation after the fall of then East Pakistan.

But he said the Shimla process was disturbed because Kashmiris did not accept it and started an armed struggle in 1989, and warned that they could “spoil the party” again if they were kept out of the process.

While agreeing to flexibility as an essence of a negotiated settlement, he said: “If Kashmiris are not involved and their wishes are not taken into consideration, I don’t think any solution can come about.”

“When it does not include Kashmiris, it is a joke,” said British House of Lords member Lord Nazir Ahmad about the peace process, adding that he did not know of any peace process anywhere in the world where affected people were not involved.

“No solution will be workable unless the Kashmiri people play a pivotal role (in the process)...with India and Pakistan helping them,” he said.

He opposed the idea of a “united states of Kashmir” put forth by All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, asking how the region could be united when its different parts were run by India and Pakistan.

Lord Nazir said although the U.N. resolutions envisaging a plebiscite in Kashmir had become old, they still remained the basis of the Kashmir dispute.

Even the earthquake calamity, he said, would not change the situation unless the Kashmiri people were involved in the process.

He disagreed with the view that Pakistan and India follow the example of Europe in resolving the situation, saying the situation in South Asia was different in the matter economies, religions and culture with extremists believing in domination on both sides.

Mr Amanullah Khan, who seeks independence for a reunited Kashmir, accused both the Indian and Pakistani leadership of denying Kashmiris their right to self-determination by agreeing to the Indian Independence Act that allowed only state rulers to decide accession and then taking back the same right given by the United Nations by signing of the Shimla agreement.

He said Kashmiris were kept out even in the Lahore Declaration signed in February 1999 when then Indian prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee came there by bus and in the January 2004 agreement between Mr Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf to resume the peace dialogue.

The JKLF leader described the start of the Muzaffarabad- Srinagar bus service in April and the recent opening of five crossing points on the LoC as “lollipops” to hoodwink Kashmiris in the same way as Palestinians were lured to sell their lands to Jews at attractive prices before the establishment of Israel.

“There should be friendship between India and Pakistan, but not at the cost of our freedom,” he said.

Sardar Khalid Ibrahim said Kashmiris were ready to contribute to the peace process with themselves being at the centre-stage but would not accept Kashmir as a territorial dispute and LoC as border.

He acknowledged that confidence-building measures were needed to sustain the peace process — rather than being a solution — but said Pakistani leaders’ proposals for self- governance and demilitarisation actually contributed to the Indian point of view and negated article 257 of Pakistan’s constitution that says that relationship with Kashmir would be decided in accordance with the wishes of the state people after they decided to accede to Pakistan.