Senator McCain meets Indian Kashmir officials

Full details of the discussions with local army officials were not made available to the media.


Afp August 16, 2011

SRINAGAR, INDIA: US senator John McCain held discussions ‘on various important issues’ with India's top representative in Kashmir and senior Indian army officials on Tuesday, the government said.

"During their wide-ranging discussions lasting for about two hours, Senator McCain and the Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra exchanged views on various important issues of mutual interest," a statement from the government read.

It said the chief of the Indian army's northern division, of which Kashmir is an important part, and the army chief of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley were also present during the discussions.

Full details of the discussions were not made available to the media.

The senior Republican was accompanied by two foreign policy advisers and diplomats from the US embassy in New Delhi.

The senator later met Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

The meetings took place in Indian Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar, once the hub of an urban insurgency.

Earlier the former US presidential candidate and senior Republican Senator John McCain visited Pakistan last week as part of ongoing efforts by the US and Pakistan to repair ties damaged by the Abbottabad raid on May 2.

McCain, 75, is also a senior member of the US Senate’s Arms Services Committee, which has the power to approve or deny military assistance to Pakistan.

Senator McCainhad met Pakistan’s top civil and military leadership to discuss the ongoing tensions, according to Foreign Office officials.

(Read: Easing tensions : ‘Maverick’ McCain arrives in Pakistan)

COMMENTS (41)

Dr,A.K.Tewari | 12 years ago | Reply

Kashmir issue have been created by west to drag the progress of muslims .Think how ?....!

G. Din | 12 years ago | Reply

@Rational: "....so your logic is that because there are so many poor people that there MUST be a violent revolution?" No, that was not my logic. Violent revolutions do not occur because there is a large number of poor people. Violent revolutions occur when those poor people have lost hope of any advancement. You don't need large number of people for that although the larger the number, the better there is a real possibility of such a revolution. Poverty is not a plague unless you are stuck in it for a long time. A certain amount of poverty is a necessary condition for a human society to function. But, when a society does not allow the possibility of movement from one economic strata to another, that is when the hopes are lost and a real possibility of violent revolution emerges. In answer to your following paragraph, does the Anna Hazaare movement against corruption in India presently under way buttress my argument about the general empowerment of Indians? Has "..lack of education of human rights, no sense of entitlement and suppression." thwarted this movement in any way? If we had waited for redressal of all those shortcomings, India would not have had a democratic form of government. For your information, when the Constitution was being debated in Indian Constituent Assembly, there was a proposal to exclude uneducated and the illiterate from the democratic process. It was turned down and rightly so. You don't need "education of human rights, sense of entitlement and suppression." to sense you have been wronged!

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