Ready to engage with Centre to resolve Kashmir issue: Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq

Srinagar: Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Friday said the separatist amalgam is ready to engage with the BJP-led Centre for the resolution of the "Kashmir issue".

"When the APHC (All Parties Hurriyat Conference) was formed by the leadership in 1993, the situation was entirely different with militancy at its peak (in Jammu and Kashmir).

"Even at that time, the APHC, in its proclamation, had clearly stated that it advocates for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir conflict by engagement and even after 30 years, this outlook remains the same," the mirwaiz said here.

He was addressing the Friday congregation at the Jamia Masjid in the city's Nowhatta area.

The mirwaiz said at the BRICS Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself spoke about dialogue and diplomacy as the means for settling conflicts and not war.

"The Hurriyat talked to (former prime ministers Atal Bihari) Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, (former Pakistani president Pervez) Musharraf and is always ready to engage with the current dispensation in New Delhi. There has been too much bloodshed in Kashmir to allow it to continue," the Hurriyat chairman said.

The mirwaiz called for investigations into recent terror attacks in Ganderbal and Baramulla districts of Jammu and Kashmir.

A local doctor and six non-local labourers were gunned down by terrorists at a tunnel-construction site in the Gagangir area of Ganderbal on Sunday, while the attack in the Gulmarg area in north Kashmir's Baramulla on Thursday left four people, including two soldiers, dead.

"The recent killings in Gagangir are shocking and disturbing. Now, we hear of killings in the high-security area of Gulmarg. These are very serious matters that can escalate and should be investigated," the Hurriyat chief said.