ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan will continue its longstanding practice of interacting with the Kashmiri leadership despite objections from the Indian government, said a foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday.
“As you know meetings between the All Parties Hurriyat Conference leadership and Pakistan’s high commissioner in New Delhi is a longstanding practice and it will continue,” Riffat Masood, the acting spokesperson for the Foreign Office told a private media outlet.
She was responding to recent criticism in the Indian media about Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit’s meeting with veteran Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Gilani in New Delhi. Basit visited Gilani’s residence to brief him about the outcome of the recent talks between the foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India.
India cancelled the foreign secretary-level talks in August last year at the last moment as a protest over the Pakistani high commissioner’s meeting with the Kashmiri leaders.
But the spokesperson rejected the Indian concerns, saying that Pakistan “recognises the Hurriyat as the true representatives of the Kashmiri people and hence regular meetings take place with them”.