Kashmir moot useless: Mirwaiz

SRINAGAR: Indian held Kashmir’s chief Islamic priest and leading separatist on Friday dismissed talks between New Delhi and local political leaders as a useless “seminar” that failed to achieve anything.

After two days of talks with mainly pro-Indian politicians — separatists boycotted the roundtable — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said he had asked them to set up five panels to look at Kashmir’s future, including one on “special status”.

But Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the Kashmir Valley’s chief Islamic priest and head of the main separatist group, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, said the meeting had failed. “We had some apprehensions about roundtable conference and the apprehensions came true. This conference was like a seminar and failed to yield any result,” he said in his Friday sermon at the main mosque in the summer capital, Srinagar. reuters

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